The Most Resilient Parasite Is An Idea
by budchick
Summary: Harry Potter lives at Grimmauld Place with all of his friends and family. There's Mom and Dad, Dad's friends Sirius and Remus, Sirius' cousins Andromeda, Bellatrix and Narcissa and their families, and everything is perfect. He doesn't know who Voldemort is, and he doesn't need anyone telling him to wake up. TMR/HP. Crossover with Inception.
1. Chapter 1

_Chapter 1:_

Harry was running from something.

There was a sense of blind panic. The lighting was dim, and there were indistinct shapes rushing around and tilting as he ran. He couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything, there was nothing beyond what he could feel in himself.

There was a memory: Hogwarts, with the death eaters rushing in.

It was gone in the next instant. Harry couldn't think. His head was spinning, rapidly round and round in circles, in a tornado of thoughts and sensation. His breathing was ragged and he felt dizzy and light-headed as he rounded several corners in a row.

Another memory: Standing on the highest floor in the astronomy tower, at the pivot of a life-changing event and completely and utterly helpless.

Everything had gone wrong. Harry had a vague recollection of a plan. Something happened to it – stop, his brain was telling him. Don't think about it now, don't stop running.

Why? He asked. A third memory came up: the slip-side sounds of a basilisk slithering around somewhere, echoing throughout the chamber.

Because Voldemort's coming to get you.

The conditions were bad. Dim light and shifting shadows made hazards hard to see, and Harry wasn't concentrating. He tripped over something, and something made a crackling noise in the dark and then the next thing Harry knew, the floor had given way underneath him. The young Gryffindor bit down on his tongue as gravity pulled him down and backwards, air whooshing past his ear.

And just when Harry thought he might fall forever, Harry hit the ground side-first. His right side slammed hard against the concrete floor. _Jesus-Merlin_-_FUCK_, _that's definitely a broken rib_, he thought, as he tried to repress the pain blooming through his torso.

Broken or not, it wouldn't have mattered in the end. The boy-who-lived couldn't afford to lie down on the ground and recover, so he made an attempt to push himself up slowly using his other arm. He tried to control his breathing while his mind worked to judge the damage. He tried to turn his wrist, and felt a sharp pain radiate all the way up his shoulder.

_Okay_, he hissed through his teeth. _Lesson learnt._

Cradling his arm to his chest, Harry began to make slow stuttering steps in a random direction. He tried to figure out where he was. He still couldn't see anything.

Continual darkness has a way of seeping into your emotions and thoughts. Harry was lost, and alone and there was no clear path away he knew to be safe. He wondered if he was going to die here. Harry wondered if Ginny was okay.

The air here seemed different somehow. Less still, less musty, which was strange, since he was down deeper into the earth – he felt like he'd gone deeper into the earth. It was the wrong way to go, because he needed to get out – out of this maze, back out into the sunlight where his friends were. Maybe he was wrong about getting lost, maybe he was getting closer to the surface, and the thought cheered him.

It was then he heard it – the sound of laughter, light like a child's, tinkling in the distance. It could've be anywhere from five metres away to a mile – sound echoed strangely in this place.

It was discouraging. At that moment, Harry felt then that – despite all his efforts and running – he was only where Voldemort wanted him to be. The stakes were rising. _I need to be careful from now on,_ he thought. He could be inventive, clever and unpredictable at times, but Gryffindor's best characteristic was their valour, and he knew that bravery would serve him best down here.

He made slow, careful steps. What else could he do, but keep moving? Step, heel down first, then roll the rest of your foot down, balls and then toes. Stick close to the walls. Slow your breathing, you need to be _quiet_, it's just like sneaking out into the kitchen for food at the Dursleys –

Harry could hear shuffling sounds from the corridor on the right. The left passage didn't smell very good – a bit like old socks – so he took the passage in the middle. It lead him to an antechamber, with eight roughly-hewn, wooden doors. He picked lucky number seven from the left, also his birth month. That lead him in a circle, and several passageways later, he was back in the antechamber. Someone else had been here as well – door number four was open. A shiver ran down his spine.

He tried door number seven from the right this time, or door number two. Harry walked in, saw the fancy, intricate light-show indicative of heavy-weight warding inscribed in the ground, the cloaks hiding in the shadows, and knew it was a mistake. The door started to swing shut behind him.

Quidditch had trained his reflexes, quickened his actions and his thoughts, but despite all that, Harry wasn't quick enough. A hand grabbed hold of his ankle, and he fell over, and then there were more hands on his ankles, pulling him backwards towards the middle of the room, with the sharp, edgy lines of brilliance, even as he was trying to scrabble forward, ripping his nails on the stone, burning his fingers in the light, and screaming, screaming, _screaming_.

_Weight pressed down on the back of his thighs_. He panicked, tried to kick out, couldn't, and _what was that playing in the background? _Some French song –

Not important. Someone slammed one of Harry's arms down. Harry could feel a bruising grip on his bicep; a grip that forced the Gryffindor's veins to bulge out. Another person carefully pushed in a needle – what use did wizards have for needles, Harry wondered, even as his vision slipped in and out. He could feel them move off him, could feel that arm spasming, even as he felt the rock beneath him shift around and _up_

and then –

"Harry, Harry, you're so slow! Uncle Sirius is throwing a party today! It's already seven o'clock!"

The voice sliced through his dream; a sheet of white memory trailing into frayed ribbons that floated to the ground. Dissipating. Harry startled, heart beat racing fast, still sweaty and clammy.

He was in an unfamiliar room.

::::

Inside his head, something shifted.

_::::_

**_Harry's bedroom, Godric's Hollow._**

**Sometime before Hogwarts begins.**

**07:04 a.m**.

Wait... why did he think that? This wasn't an unfamiliar room. This was... this was _his_ room.

That was his Hogwart's cloak draped over the chair. His golden lion-print shag rug, his Quidditch posters for the Holyhead Harpies, his red-and-yellow socks dangling from the radio antenna. There were letters from his friends – Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, and magical theory, sci-fi and cooking books on a bookshelf, and _that _was a moving photo of his family at the '93 International Broom Show, and _that _stain on his wall came from when he tried to mix liquid turpentine with the Pepper-Up Potion. It was all coming back to him.

"Haaaa-rry, Har-rrrrrie, Haeri-eeeeette – "

And that voice belonged to the young girl who was jumping up and down in his room. Aunt Petunia's dirty-blonde hair, Dad's brown eyes. She was looking imploringly at his face...

_Azalea_, a voice whispered into his head. _You have a little baby-sister._

Azalea. She liked fairies... and she pronounced her name like 'Oz-zil-ly'... because she became annoyed when people pronounced her name like the flower. Although it was traditional to name the girls in their family after flowers, Azalea was at that stage where everything had to happen her way or else.

Azalea had taken one of his hands and was swinging it floppily up and down through the air.

There was a French piece playing on his radio – one of Mom's favourites, Edith Piaf's '_Non, je ne regrette rien_', he remembered now. _Pfft_, of course, the melody should be familiar, he had only heard his mom singing it, what five hundred times over? He turned things over in his head as Edith Piaf continued to warble distractingly on the airwaves.

Yeah, he set his radio to turn on at seven. Because he didn't want to be late for ….

…

For Sirius' family get-together.

That's right.

...

GOD-_RIC_, he was slow this morning.

…

In the meanwhile, Azalea had gotten bored with merely swinging her brother's arm randomly, and sensing that she was losing her brother's attention, she moved to slapping his arm against the bed covers.

Harry pulled his arm back. Azalea pouted, looking cross.

"Didn't you hear the radio?"

Had he? What had he been dreaming about? He could remember fragments, and he had a sense that it was important that he remembered his dream... but that was ridiculous wasn't it? It was only a dream. And the thing with dreams was – they felt real while you were in them.

"Sorry, I had a bad dream," Harry replied quietly, semi-consciously ran a broad, tanned hand through his hair, and reassured her with a smile, though it didn't reach his eyes. He pulled his hand away, grimacing. Ugh, oily.

"...Nightmare?" Azalea asked, plaintively, in that soft-girl way of hers.

"No, not really. Just a strange dream."

Just a strange dream. Merlin, he thought he was over bad dreams.

"There was a lot of rocks and a needle, I think."

She giggled. "You're so weird, big bro." Then she stood up, straightening herself, and her summery dress fluttered about her with the movement.

"Ok, if it wasn't a nightmare, then come on!_ C_ome on, come on, hurry up Harry, Harry-up, Hurry-Harry-Hurry!" With that, she galloped out of reach, making horse noises as young children do, through the oak-panelled doorway and out of sight.

::::

Harry could still _feel _the dream a good half an hour later. It made everything around him feel alien. Foreign and bizarre.

There had been a bar of soap in his hand. It was supposed to have the brand-name 'Dove' stamped on it, but someone had scraped out the 'v' so that it spelt 'Do-e'. There was something about it way it smelt – Lily of the Valley – that made him stare.

But after a cold shower, and clean clothes, if his own mom was to ask him what he dreamt of, he would only be able to remember that he had been running. The clothes helped some – he felt a lot more comfortable, settled in his own skin. By the time he was at the floo, the dream was gone.

Azalea was already there, squirming and tapping her feet. His mom was fussing with some last minute arrangements to Azalea's hair, plaiting two ponytails down her back, struggling a little because of Azalea's fidgeting. Harry could hear his dad in the kitchen.

Just as his dad walked into the room, throwing a jacket over a shoulder, Azalea slid out of her mom's hold, and ran to the mantle. She grabbed a handful of floo powder which she threw into the fireplace, and two hairbands which she kept in one small palm. She was a child, and a child to two Gryffindors at that, so she didn't skip a beat before walking into the fireplace, although the fire hadn't turned green yet.

"No wait, Azalea, wait!" Harry yelled. James merely laughed at the girl's antics, before doing the same thing – walking in without waiting for the fire to turn green.

"I think it's safe to blame your father for teaching her his bad habits," Lily sighed, tying her hair up.

"I know that Ginny does the same thing," Harry shrugged, trying to dislodge his discomfort.

Lily toed on her ballet flats. "We taught her how to floo too early so she's never going to stop until she gets burnt. And then you get children who aren't afraid to rush off into the fireplace."

"It scares me too. But luckily, I don't ever have to worry about you, isn't that right?" Lily said, with a soft expression that unfurled into a cheeky grin. She pinched his nose, and then walked through the yellow-green flames herself.

Harry smiled.

:::

It only took Harry the length of the floo-ride to decide that he was being a buzz-kill. _What's wrong with me today? _Normally, he'd be buzzing with excitement long before this point – afterall, they were going to _Sirius' _house. Sirius, his godfather, who was fun and games twenty-four seven, who treated Harry like he was the best and most important thing in Sirius' world.

He noticed his sister first. Azalea was already bouncing up and down in her godfather Remus's arms. (_'Uncle Remus, uncle Remus, look at me, I lost a tooth!' 'That's great, dear.') _Sirius and James were only a few steps away, with Lily.

"Hey, the Prongslet-the-First's here!" Sirius Black was a big man with strong arms. Harry felt the full force of his strength as Sirius gave him a manly pat on the back, and ruffled his hair vigourously. "No surprises or anything today okay, we've got guests coming over. But putting that aside, how's my mini-marauder?"

Harry flushed bright red under the attention.

"I'm fine," he eeked out. Really, Harry was getting too old for hair-ruffling, but he didn't say anything because he always felt a strange shock of instantaneous _relief _twist inside him every time he came into contact with Sirius.

He ignored it, as usual, because anyone would rather be in denial than examine what looked like the beginnings of a late teenage crush on their godfather. Really awkward.

"I'm starting 6th year this September."

"Aww, the liddle tyke is growing up! I feel so old," Sirius pretended to wipe at his face. "Remember our 6th year? They banned us from the Astronomy Tower."

"That might have something to do with all the girls you were bringing up there," Remus chipped in, disentangling himself gently from Azalea's fingers.

"Who would've guessed she was the Professor's niece?" James laughed, and Lily standing next time him sighed. It was like Hogwarts all over again, every single time they met.

"... and Prongs my man, you've gained some weight there, sitting at home, haven't you?" Sirius gave his best friend a wink and a friendly jab in the side. James responded with the same.

"Well, _I_ have a wife who is as lovely as she is beautiful, to cook for me," throwing an appreciative glance at Lily. "How's _Kreacher?_"

Sirius gave an exaggerated put-off sigh. "Oh, Prongsie, Kreacher makes the most miserable of wives. He bends over backwards for the Regulus and the girls, but I still get cold cabbage soup. You make a very pressing point, dear friend. Lily, what do you say to eloping with me? We could go to Marjorca, swim in blue ocean waters or tan ourselves on the beach all day– "

"Hush, you," Lily swatted an arm away. "Sounds promising, but I'm afraid _Remus _has already stolen my heart with his display of child-rearing excellence. We elope in the fall."

"Moony, you home-wrecker!" – "Moony! You dog!" – "No, Sirius is the dog." – "No, Sirius is Sirius." – "I would've thrown in ice cream for the kids too, had you but _asked_" –

Lily was way too used to her husband's childish antics. She only rolled her eyes and moved herself and her children into the main room. She wasn't going to fool herself into thinking that Sirius would miraculously develop manners and god-forbid fulfill his role as a host. Harry had been just standing there, being polite, and was extremely glad that no one had caught on to the way he reacted around Sirius.

They caught Severus Snape near the dining room. He looked like he was about to enter the room, but upon catching sight of Lily, he had stopped, statue-still in the middle of the hallway, head turned slightly to where his mom was.

The way his head was turned cast half of his features into darkness, and the left side of his face was overshadowed by long and oily looking hair. It only emphasized the shape of his sharp, beaky nose and pitch-black eyes.

It was obvious that he was waiting for them to catch up.

Harry didn't know what to make of Professor Snape.

He wasn't an uncle, not like Uncle Sirius who'd buy him tricks and treats, or Uncle Remus who would take him to the zoo when he got bored. He was introduced as Mr. Snape, and now that he was Harry's potion's professor, Harry thought of him as Professor Snape, which he felt a bit off about because it didn't adequately describe how constant the man had been in his childhood.

He used to change Harry's diapers when he was a kid. Did the occasional babysitting when Dad, Uncle Sirius and Uncle Remus were off having manly-man adventures together. Always around, but always in the background… and somehow, in his childhood memories, Professor Snape was always standing next to his mom. Hmmm_._

"Severus! How is that new potion of yours going?"

"It's progressing well."

This soon developed into a conversation about the economy and various charms, and then Severus's love life, which Harry thought he could guess. Instead of standing around restlessly, he thought he'd wander into the kitchen. Occasionally, the Black house elves could be persuaded into giving him a treat before the main meal.

Lily noticed him leaving out of the corner of her eye, and without missing a beat in her conversation, she trailed her hand through Harry's hair as he walked by her. Professor Snape watched every motion of her fingers.

:::

Well, he had hoped to meet the house elves before dinner, except they weren't in the kitchen. Harry had walked in, and had been fully prepared to accept an onslaught of house elves rushing to him and asking him 'what they could do for kind Mr. Harry Potter' – this is what he got for saying regularly saying 'thank you' to them, Sirius said – but the footsteps he was expecting weren't there.

Where there were normally half a dozen elves scuttling about, instead were the three Black sisters.

Auburn-haired Andromeda Tonks had a mixing bowl, and she was chatting to Bellatrix Black, who was twirling a sharp-looking knife around in one hand. Narcissa Malfoy was sitting with perfect posture on an old rickety chair, and delicately editing a grocery list, somehow no less the queen of perfect pureblood manners for her surroundings.

She was the first to notice Harry, and gave him a distracted but warm smile, gesturing to a chair near her.

"Where are all the house elves?" Harry blurted out, as soon as he sat. There was flour, bags and buckets of raw groceries and pots and pans lying everywhere.

"I imagine they're off doing their little house elf things," Mrs Malfoy replied, checking another item off her list. "What you really mean to ask, is 'why are you in the kitchen?' and you know Harry, I don't know myself!"

"Why am I here today again, dear sister?" She turned sharply, flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder like a Sleekeazy commercial.

Bellatrix glowered briefly at Narcissa before returning to her work. "You know why."

"Remind me."

"Hush you. You're here to help me make tapas."

Bellatrix was utterly distracted by the knife she held in her hand. It was a fantastic knife – it cut through the carrots like butter, and Harry suspected that it would also cut through bone like butter, but having a sharp knife didn't mean that Bellatrix could cut carrots evenly.

"Why _are_ we cooking? I can't speak for Andy, but I've never cooked a single thing in my life. I can't imagine why you think I would be of any help here! That's what house elves are for!" Narcissa was never one to be put off.

"Just remember that Lucius owes me a favour, and so you are here. You do not get to ask why, or even speak about it, Cissa."

"Oh, I wasn't asking for myself. Goodness knows I would do anything you asked of me without question–" at this, Bellatrix rolled her eyes, " – Darling-Harry here wants to know why. He misses his elves –"

"Is it too hard to believe that I wanted to try something different?" Bellatrix interceded.

"No, not really, I was just thinking about getting a snack," Harry said, but Narcissa and Bellatrix didn't seem to be listening.

Andromeda Tonks was stirring something in a mixing bowl. She looked completely engrossed in her task, but when Harry looked closer, he could see the edge of her lips tugging up. When she noticed him, she gently put down her mixing bowl and gestured him closer. Harry was only too glad to get away from the crossfire.

He looked at her mixing bowl. Flour, eggs, sugar and … "How'd you get cake mix? I'm trying, but I just can't see Kreacher waiting in line at Tesco's."

Mrs Tonks laughed, a deep-throated, contralto production, and gave a secretive smile. The way that she was leaning against the counter emphasised her curves. Not that I'm noticing, Harry thought.

"Of course not," she said. "I brought it with me. Fell in love with it the first time I went into Muggle London.

She plucked the box from Harry's fingers, and stood there, as though reminiscing. "Just add an egg and milk, and you're done."

"You fell in love with cake mix? What about Mr. Tonks?" Harry's question was tongue-in-cheek.

"Oh, that came much, much later," she winked at him, and Harry laughed.

There was a loud clash coming from the direction of her other sisters, and Andromeda's head snapped up. "You are acting like a schoolgirl with a crush. It's deplorable," she snapped at Bellatrix.

Mrs Tonks turned back to Harry. "Be a love and find a measuring cup, will you?" She looked at the mess in the kitchen and sighed.

"What's the use of automatic measuring cups when they're hidden somewhere underneath all that mess – _do not use Accio_, that's why there's flour on the floor –"

Harry put away his wand, and went to dig through the bags by hand. In the background, the sisters were bickering. 'Absolutely absurd, to think that for all of our family's vaunted ideas about blood purity, I am the only one in the end upholding Toujours Pur,' Narcissa was saying.

Well, Harry didn't know if the cup was in any of the cupboards yet, but he was pretty sure that one of the pots on the stove wasn't meant to be bubbling and spitting like that. The other pots didn't seem to be doing too well either. The metal looked like it was melting?

"Mrs Tonks, I think the carrots have finished steaming."

:::

The house elves got called in en force. Mrs Malfoy, being the only one who wasn't doing anything to try and save the food, gently pushed him out of the kitchen.

"I can't imagine that you are too entertained here. My son should be around here somewhere."

On the other hand, Harry got the treacle tarts that he wanted. Yum.

Harry had finished two off, and he was saving one for his sister. He was also deliberating on whether or not he should save one for Malfoy – they certainly weren't friends, but meeting each other as often as they did meant that they were distantly related cousins that felt like family – when the decision was made for him.

"Malfoy, if you have to steal my food, you could try not to eat it in the hallway."

Draco smirked. One of the tarts that he was holding hostage was missing a small chunk.

"I wonder why we have house elves, Potter." Funny, how Malfoy and his mom were exactly the same. "But if you insist, we can move to the dining room. It makes no difference to my level of enjoyment, as long as I get to eat it in front of you."

"Bugger off, Malfoy. I already had two."

Draco's smirk abruptly morphed into a scowl. Whatever he was about to say however, was obscured up by ear-deafening, pained screaming, coming from the direction of the parlour.

The boys looked at each other askance, and then ran towards the entrance. Draco made sure that Harry would be leading, however, just in case there was a vampire at the door or something similar. So when Harry suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, Draco ran into him.

"_MONSTER! ABOMINATION MOST FOUL! YOU DARE DEBASE THIS HOUSEHOLD WITH YOUR FILTH, YOU DARE CORRUPT THE SANCTITY OF OUR BLOOD WITH YOUR TAINT!"_

There was a stranger in the house.

There was also a painting of a screeching old woman, who had hitherto been half-hidden behind an umbrella stand and some cloth. Harry had wondered why fashion-conscious Bellatrix had put those hideous drapes out in the parlour where everyone could see it – now he knew. But her howling wasn't anything important.

_Do you believe in destiny? _Harry thought of gypsies and fortune tellers. Those divinators that played with their tarot cards, contacted their mysterious spirits, and then spoke of miraculous, divine things in your future. When they talk about providence and predestination? He was it.

The man felt like fate and prophecy.

Like smoke wafting off a cauldron in a graveyard. Acrid, deep, dark smoke from a fire languidly burning and dying, smoke that artfully swirled upwards and flooded the room, all-consuming and suffocating, the kind that sent children to sleep and then killed them very, very slowly. A fire that turns all it touches into ash. The thick smell of molten, melting gold.

Harry wondered if this meant that his extremely uncomfortable crush on Sirius was over. He wasn't too happy that he had latched onto another guy.

But honestly, the man in the foreroom looked like he had walked off straight off the pages of a magazine. Harry guessed late twenties to early thirties. He was just standing there, the very picture of high fashion and effortless grace, nonchalant and unaffected, even as the portrait screamed obscenities in his ear.

And then he looked up at Harry, and their eyes caught and violins should start playing anytime now–

Hell froze over.

:::

What was that?For a second, a pale, serpentine face and red eyes superimposed the man's features, but then Harry blinked, and it was gone. It left only after-impressions – fiendfyre, screaming and torture.

He couldn't explain the ship-sharp fear that had just cut into him, the cold that froze his thoughts and dripped down his spine. Harry didn't know what he was expecting, but this wasn't it.

"_AND YOU! BELLATRIX YOU BLOOD TRAITOR YOU WHORE, YOU SHAME THIS HOUSE WITH YOUR DEVIANCY, A MENTAL AFFLICTION MOST ABHORRENT AND PERVERSE! A HALF-BLOOD! REPULSIVE! OUTRAGEOUS! HOW THIS HOUSE HAS FALLEN!"_

Reality flooded in again. Bellatrix whipped past Harry in a flash, and quickly closed the curtains over the painting. There must've been a very strong silencing spell on those drapes, because as soon as they dropped, the hallway was then again blessed with silence.

"I am so sorry that you had to witness that, Tom, Harry. I don't know how she manages to open those curtains as a painting, but she does."

In between her ill-fated venture into the culinary arts and now, Bellatrix had taken the time to change. She was now decked to the nines – high heels, her hair black-as-sin was curled up into a complicated French twist with ringlets, and she was wearing a tight, shimmering, backless dress which Harry could appreciate.

The man – Tom? – quirked an eyebrow.

"It's fine. That wasn't the reception that I had hoped to receive, but I understand that we can't help who we are related to. But you more than make up for it. Is that a new dress?"

His voice was velveteen, smooth and silky. Caramel on disparity between the warmth in the man's voice, and the distant sense-memory of raw, ice-numbing chills silently wracking Harry's body was making his head spin.

"Oh, this little old thing? It's nothing special," Bellatrix twirled around in a circle, showing off the way the light hit her dress. She was preening, just a little bit.

"Then it must be the woman wearing it, who makes it shine so. You look beautiful tonight."

"Thank you." Yep, Bellatrix was definitely preening. "Now to do things properly – I, Bellatrix Black, scion of the House of Black, welcome you to Grimmauld Place. _Mi casa, su casa. _Come, I'll show you around," and with that, she grabbed hold of one arm and pretty much dragged him away.

Harry felt like he didn't start breathing again until _that man_ was out of the room. In fact, he probably would've stayed in that state of reverie for a while, had Draco not nudged him very painfully in the ribs at that exact moment.

"Bloody hell, what was that for?" Harry had forgotten that Draco was there.

"For eying my aunt up, Potter. Don't think I didn't notice you gaping like an idiot. Also, look at him, she's taken and you certainly can't compete. Trust me. That will end in heartbreak."

"I was NOT eying up your aunt!" Harry replied, scandalized. Well, ok, he had been, a little. But that wasn't what had drawn his attention. In a more withdrawn voice, Harry asked – "Malfoy, who's he?"

"Scoping out the competition, are we?" Draco asked, with a wide, Chesire cat-like grin.

Harry elbowed him.

"Salazar! No need to get violent, Harry, you won't get her that way," Draco huffed. "Or maybe you might, I've heard she likes that sort of thing." This was said in a quieter voice. "Also, not something I want to think about."

"Anyhow, that's Tom Riddle. He's Auntie Bellatrix's on-off thing, and right now, they're _ON_." He made suggestive eyebrow movements to accompany this sentence.

Harry made a face. "I'm not trying to compete or anything, I just think he looks familiar, that's all."

A bell rang. "Dinner's ready. Let's go."

:::

As it was, dinner wasn't ready – Nymphadora 'Dora' Tonks had just knocked her hand into the bell. The boys got to the table just before she had finished setting out the places, and so, got roped into helping. Or more like, Harry was helping, because he was good like that, and Draco was offering 'helpful criticism'.

"The water glass should be placed at 1:00, above the knives, scarface. Where are you putting that cup?"

Harry was tempted to throw the cup at Malfoy's face, but valiantly resisted. "So sorry that my table-setting skills don't match up to your high expectations. Why don't you come down here and show me how it's done then?"

"What do I look like, an elf?"

"Do you want me to answer that question?"

Draco waved at someone behind Harry. "Hello mother. Harry here was about to comment on the good looks I inherited from you. What were you going to say about my face, Harry?"

:::

Slowly but surely, everyone eventually trickled into the dining room.

Bellatrix and her mysterious escort were the last to arrive, which suited Bellatrix well, as it meant all eyes were on Bellatrix and _that man._

She put one of her hands to her lips (although her arm-length lacy gloves didn't quite cover her cat-got-the-canary smile) and delicately cleared her throat.

"Right now, there will be some of you who are wondering why I've brought this strange man to our family dinners. To those who haven't met him yet, this is Tom Riddle. He's a British Unspeakable. You could say that we've been dating for about four months."

Then she began to make introductions.

"Tom, immediately to your left is the Tonks family, my older sister Andromeda who you've met, her husband Ted, and their daughter Nymphadora –" Nymphadora who gave a flirty grin, and turned her hair black, showing off her skills as a metamorphagus. Bellatrix gave her an indulgent smile, and moved on.

"Then those are the Malfoys, Draco, Narcissa who you've also met, her husband Lucius, and his associate; Severus Snape. Then one of my cousins, Sirius Black, his friend Remus Lupin, and then the Potters – James, Lily, Harry, and then little Azalea at the end."

Mr. Riddle stepped up to the forefront of the table, addressing the room.

"It's an absolute pleasure to meet you all," he asserted, looking everyone in the eye.

"Bellatrix has told me many lovely things about you, and I am truly gratified to be here, at one of your family events." He managed to sound completely sincere, although something about it struck Harry a little bit off. Though he wouldn't be able to tell you why, if pressed.

Dinner was spread, appearing instantly onto the table a la Hogwarts.

Azalea poked at it. "What is this?"

Bellatrix chose to respond as though Azalea's comment was a real question.

"It's Peking duck. We also have Mongolian lamb with spring onions, stir-fried beef in black bean sauce, and honey-soy chicken with noodles. As appetizers, we have spring rolls and dim sims." She was just this side of defensive.

_I thought that we would be eating something with carrots. What happened to the tapas?_

No one else looked like they were going to say anything about it though, so Harry let it go. Draco was even nodding approvingly. Harry supposed that honey-soy chicken could sound exotic enough to a pureblood, in the same way that apple and coconut pie sounded exotic and interesting. It sure looked fancy enough, being served on gold-encrusted china and all. But for anyone who had ever experienced Muggle takeaway though, it was a little less thrilling.

For example: Lily's face was utterly bemused, as she spooned some of the stir-fry onto her plate.

Harry caught his mom's gaze in the corner of his eye, and they turned to each other. Everything was still for a second.

Then they both burst out laughing.

Naturally, his dad and Uncle Sirius wanted to get in on the joke. Severus was trying to look impassioned, but ultimately failed – Harry could see his lips turning up very slightly at the sides. Further down the table, Tom Riddle was looking at the food with the strangest expression on his face, and all the Tonkses were completely gone.

It was in the midst of all this commotion, that Harry was hit by this impromptu, intensely-personal situational awareness, both of himself and of the present moment. He was in a house, surrounded (mostly) by people who thought well of him and loved him, and would protect him. His life was great. He was doing great.

In that moment, Harry thought that he couldn't have been happier with the world.

:::

**_The Mausoleum, Riddle's Manor._**

**October, the 23rd, of the year 1998.**

**00:46 a.m**.

Ginevra Weasley thought that trying to find Harry Potter in this tomb was a little bit like slowly kissing a dementor.

She thought about it a lot. Bending her head over and pressing her lips against dead lips, savouring the way her saliva mixed – the intimacy, the closeness, and feeling your soul getting sucked out slowly until you lost everything that made you yourself.

It would probably be quicker than what was happening to her now. Depression was changing her exactly the same way and it was decidedly less fun and awesome than kissing a dementor. They were probably good kissers.

"Harry Potter," she was whispering to herself. "We're going to find you in the next room. Please."

She opened the door.

Empty.

Like the fifty or so other rooms she'd checked before that one. The tomb was underground and no one knew what was inside – the Order was expecting a single passageway laden with traps – in the style that the Philosopher's Stone was protected, or perhaps Voldemort's locket horcrux.

Instead, there were a dozen passageways which lead to more chambers with more doors, which lead off into different directions again. It was a place for people to get lost in and never leave.

Seeing as this room was a dead end, Ginny took out her map, marked in the route she had taken, the room she had found, and retraced her steps to the last branch.

"Idiot," she told herself, and started walking again.

:::

Ginny was an idiot for many reasons.

Firstly, she was an idiot for incorrectly assuming that Harry Potter was in the possession of survival instincts.

Because he didn't have any.

Hadn't he displayed his suicidal tendencies when he confronted a thousand-year old basilisk, just to save her? She had appreciated it so much at the time. She thought he was brave and selfless.

What did that do, but encourage him? Ginny shouldn't have done that. She should have blown him off, dusted herself off coldly, and yelled at him for reading her diary. Stopped that selflessness dead in its tracks. She had no one to blame but herself then, for perpetuating his lemming-like behaviour – and where did it get him? A make-shift funeral in the rain, with a grave marked in the forest with old sticks tied together, and no body to bury.

_That night_.

:::

**_Somewhere near the Forbidden Forest, Hogwarts._**

**May, the 2nd, of the year 1998.**

**11:47 p.m**.

The sequence of events of the so-called 'Final Battle' was hazy. Everything had happened so fast, and the atmosphere was insane, the adrenaline rush was enough to make a person hallucinate, envision things that weren't really there. Flashes of images flew through her head – a stone gargoyle blown to bits, the whizz of spell-fire shooting above her head, the heat of and smell of fire emanating from the 7th floor... She saw these things, but she was no longer sure if it had happened. It didn't feel real to her.

Voldemort had attacked the castle.

She was near the Forbidden Forest that night. There was a girl on the ground. Ravenclaw. Ginny didn't know her name, she was a 7th year. She was gasping and spluttering like she was choking on something, so Ginny stopped to help her find her wand. And when Ginny stood up, she thought she saw Harry pass by, and took a second to watch his back as he walked into the forest.

She thought about calling out to him then, say something like 'good luck,' or 'I believe in you' or maybe even 'I love you'. But...

Harry had wanted to keep her in the Room of Requirement, trussed up like some helpless maiden. What would he think, seeing her out on the battlefield.

...the Ravenclaw needed to be escorted to the make-shift infirmary though, so she said nothing, and instead, made rationalizations to herself. Harry is busy being a hero. He does not need distractions from hapless girls who were overly infatuated with him.

:::

She was an idiot, secondly, for not immediately connecting the dots between Voldemort saying 'I shall wait one hour in the Forbidden Forest' and _Harry walking into the forest._

Ginny asked herself all the time. 'Why didn't I stop and think about it – oh, Harry's walking into the Forest, I wonder what for? What on Merlin's magic-breathing EARTH was I thinking?'

She was thinking 'Harry's not going to give himself up. He's much too clever for that. Voldemort made the announcement twice, didn't he, and Pansy Parkinson and the Slytherins wanted him to give himself up and Harry said 'no', he must have.'

Harry never came out of the Forest.

It was to everyone's surprise that Voldemort was capable of keeping his word. He left. _What had happened in that forest?_

Harry couldn't have died very easily, Ginny thought. She remembered Tom Marvolo Riddle. He left her to die, body freezing on the ground, no energy to even lift her head up or scream. And there were a lot of Death Eaters.

Ginny thought about that moment a lot. In her dreams, she called out to him, and he looked back. She ran to him and hugged him. She tackled him to the ground, she screamed _'what do you think you're doing?'_ She did everything but stand there, watching him walk away, like a stranger on the street.

She wondered what gave Harry the idea that he would do anyone any good, martyring himself on the end of Voldemort's wand. And then realised, it wasn't a 'what', but 'who'.

Ginny knew she was probably the last person, outside of Voldemort and the death eaters themselves, to see Harry Potter alive.

The knowledge had eaten away at her. It was as though bits and pieces of her were rotting and falling off, dying off just as Harry died.

Her hand on the Weasley's clock was always pointed at 'moral peril' these days. No one really paid that clock much attention now though – looking at Fred's clock-hand, pointed to 'dead' – was too painful. 'Mortal peril' was at least, better than 'dead'.

But only just.

Her death was _just _slower.

:::

**_The Bedroom Overlooking The Orchard, The Burrow._**

**September, the 30th, of the year 1998.**

**03:17 a.m**.

Ginny didn't say anything when Severus Snape apparated into her room one night. She recognised him from his figure, and the way he stalked, slowly, deliberately, around her bed. She still made no response, not when he sat down on one side, nor when his eyes roamed the length of her body, inspecting the bony legs that she had curled into her body, the ribs peeking out from her nightshirt and the red hair flowing lifelessly onto the pillow.

He leaned forward to pick up a stray lock of her hair, revealing a mass of ugly scar tissue around his neck. She didn't react to that either.

There was a minute or so of silence, as he gently rubbed the strands between his fingers, examining the colour.

"You _are _a wretched little girl, aren't you?"

What could she say? She agreed.

"Your little boy hero isn't dead. But for every second that you languor here, Ms. Weasley, he becomes harder to retrieve."

She jolted right up at this, scrambling the bed sheets. There was nothing but shock on her face as she processed this. _What? Harry was alive? She wasn't guilty?_

"...What do you mean? He gave himself up to save the castle. Everyone says that he's dead. ...He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named says he's dead."

There was a new story every week about what the Death Eaters had done with him. They all ended the same way.

"The Dark Lord is a murderer, a thief and a liar. For all his tales, do you see Harry's body hanging off the walls of Hogwarts castle?"

Her eyes were dilated. _No body,_ she thought. Her hands were shaking, so she put crossed her arms, trying to stifle their movement with pressure. She was in turmoil.

Professor Snape steepled his hands, and gentled his voice.

"Harry's alive."

Idly, Ginny thought that this must've been something he had learned from Albus Dumbledore, since Snape could never do gentle very well.

"Harry's alive," he repeated. "But I'll need your help, Ginevra."

She didn't believe her old Professor Snape, not really. But if there was even a chance, and she didn't take it…

"Anything. Ask me for anything, and I'll give it to you."

Anything that would free her from her guilt.

:::

Ginny couldn't say that she was in love with Harry. They'd only had two rushed kisses, before he did his gallant disappearing act, leaving her at Hogwarts while he went off to fight a war. That one year had done a lot to increase that distance between them.

Harry could've been the love of her life. She mourned that lost potential.

But although Ginny couldn't say that she was in love with Harry, Ginny loved his bravery, his fortitude, his nobility and charity. Harry was her white knight. He had saved her, he had tried to save everyone and he died for it.

And there was the third idiocy.

For all his flaws, she…

...still thought the world of him.

:::


	2. Chapter 2

**_Diagon Alley, London._**

**June - October, of the year 1998.**

After the Final Battle, everything went back to normal, as though it were business as usual.

The dead, Death Eater and common civilians alike, were tossed into a pit, and buried in a single mass grave. There was a single plaque above it, engraved only with the somewhat ominous words – '_Lest we forget.'_

The Malfoys disappeared from the public eye. There were a large number of people arrested for 'treason against the state'. The Dark Lord entrenched himself in his manor, and would not come out for anything, nor see anyone, which was perfectly fine with the general populace. He left Pius Thicknesse to run the Ministry, which he did with a lot of nervous looks over his shoulders.

Minister Thicknesse turned this into a trend. Your average witch or wizard would be sitting down at the Three Broomsticks, or strolling down Diagon Alley, when all of a sudden, they were hit with the insuppressible urge to take a casual look behind them. Only when that urge was fulfilled, could they go back to doing whatever they had been doing before.

It just so happened that one day, the Dark Lord decided that he wanted to build a tomb. No one knew why, but no one had enough of a spine to question him either. Perhaps they felt that it was better to conserve what little spine they had, rather than lose their spine to the bone-disintegrating curse. The Ministry tried to put a positive spin on it, though from their actions, it was clear that they had no clue what was happening either. _'Isn't it great that we're spending money on infrastructure?' _and _'Isn't it great that we're creating jobs?' _would become regular Ministry announcements on the Wizarding Wireless.

In the end, whenever the topic was brought up on the street, people would either shrug, or toss their heads back in a display of blaséness, and say "Who knows why the Dark Lord does what he does?" Honestly, no one wanted to think about it too closely, since there weren't many things a wizard could use a tomb for.

So Voldemort built his Mausoleum. And then he dug several kilometres underground, leaving an underground weave of traps and tricks for the unwary traveller. It would become Voldemort's own personal series of catacombs. He had help – many a political prisoner had died digging it. Their bodies were left there to rot.

:::

The Mausoleum itself wasn't hard to find. The entrance was marked by this great, ugly monolith of a structure, depicting some scenes from the tale of the Deathly Hallows. More specifically, it demonstrated the deaths of the three Peverell brothers, whose deaths were being supervised big a dark, tall figure which must've been the artist's anthropomorphized ideal of death. Ginny had expected to see corpses staked at the entrance, but she supposed even the Dark Lord had a nose, as flat as it was.

For a typical person, the hardest part of this expedition would have been making a decision to enter the Mausoleum – everyone knew that whoever passed the doors of the Mausoleum did not get to see the light of day again. How fortunate was it then, that those trivialities no longer bothered Ginny nor any of her fellow expeditionaries.

The remaining members of Order of the Phoenix assembled. They were a sad, sorry lot. Her brother George walked through without a pause, head held high. Then went Ron and Hermione, hand-in-hand. Professor Lupin. Auror Tonks. Auror Shacklebolt. Neville and Luna. Hagrid. Charlie, Bill and Fleur. Then her. Professor Snape would round out the end.

There were no words exchanged. Everyone knew what they had to do.

:::

**_The Mausoleum, Riddle's Manor._**

**October, the 23rd, of the year 1998.**

**02:53 a.m.**

There was no light in the catacombs at all, except for what the wizards and witches conjured with their magic. Ginny had to settle with a low light – enough that she could barely see where she was going, not enough that it would stretch and disturb those things that were sleeping in the darkness. It made travel difficult, and it made her intensely aware of how tight she was holding her wand. She didn't want to imagine the horror that would befall her if she lost it in this place.

Eventually, she got to a stand-still. Ginny was standing on a raised platform and slowly moving her Lumos-lit wand across the floor, wondering how in Morgana's name she was supposed to get past the moving coalition of spikes and tentacle things that occasionally popped up from the pit.

Fortunately, she didn't have to come up with a solution. A silvery otter patronus came up from behind her and whispered into her ear.

"We've found Harry."

Ginny's heart beat spiked. She followed the otter as it scampered past mud, rats and bones, through a confusing combination of doorways and openings, until she came to an antechamber. The otter made a gesture to move onwards, and then disappeared. There was light coming from one of the doors, a true rarity in the catacombs, so she pushed it open.

_I was starting to think that this room didn't exist. _In a complete contrast to the decaying walls of stone and rot outside, Harry's room had been decorated.

Harry's body was placed in the middle of the chamber in a glass casket, splayed on an elaborately carved stone altar. The strong, pulsing white glow of the wards embedded in the glass walls bathed Harry in a brilliant white light, which faded to the same dark nothingness of the catacombs as it moved away from him. He laid silent-still, in a parody of Snow White. Voldemort had even dressed him in white. Maybe he found it funny.

As she walked closer, she began to notice other things. Like the fact that he was adorned with several items. There was a burnt, tarnished crown resting on his head. A cleaved locket that was slung over his neck, resting on his chest. He was holding a deformed cup with one hand, a stone-less ring around one finger. The other arm was folded over a ravaged book, opened across his abdomen. The effect was so that Harry looked like something sacred, bathed in daylight – a fallen king, or a sleeping saint. His chest raised and lowered with soft little breaths. _He really is alive._

"We didn't get Nagini."

Ginny spun around sharply, to where Ron and Hermione were arriving with the other members of their ragtag group.

"Ron, you scared me. What if I hexed you?"

Her brother gave her a half-hearted smirk. "I'll be louder next time, so that dementors will hear. Hagrid, Professor Lupin and Luna all got caught in traps. Fleur's broken half the bones in her left leg. But at least we know the portkeys Snape gave us work. Just so you know."

Neville was pale-faced, walking around the display, trying to absorb every aspect of it. The lighting didn't help his features.

"He looks like he's sleeping. Can we wake him up?"

Professor Snape held up a hand.

"If it were as easy as shaking him until he woke, I would've done so long before, and with pleasure, Mr Longbottom. Look here."

Ginny was too caught up in the overall effect to notice before, but there was a drip cord of some sort hidden on the inside of his right elbow. It was very thin, and nearly invisible. The tube was attached to an overhanging cauldron, hidden in the shadows. That was a little jarring.

Snape walked over to the cauldron. "This potion was one that I made for the Dark Lord. I called it the '_Somnium Semper.'_ It is something like the Draught of Living Death combined with the antithesis of dreamless sleep, so the drinker is always sleeping and always dreaming. Unlike the Draught of Living Death, there is no antidote."

There were loud noises of dismay at this. "What the bloody hell did we come here for then?"

"There is no antidote, but there is a way to bring him out of his dream-state."

He put one hand into his sleeve and pulled out a canister. "This is a similar potion. You will take one drop, and then find a comfortable place to lie somewhere within the range of the wards on the floor. The potion will trick the wards into giving you access into Mr Potter's dream."

"I will warn you. This will be a long, hard mission. Although the boy appears outwardly well, it is very likely that the Dark Lord has kept him under _Somnium_ since May, and my potions students should know that the _Dreamless Sleep_ is addictive. _Somnium is likely to be the same_. There is no telling how his health and psyche will have deteriorated underneath the potion. But remember that regardless of whatever happens in his dream world, your physical body rests in this chamber, and so, you cannot die."

"Okay Professor, you're scaring me a little here." Charlie had spoken up. "What should we be expecting after we drink the potion?"

It was like Professor Snape was back in the classroom again, and lecturing to his OWL students.

"You will drink the potion. You will find yourself feeling sleepy. And then you will drop to sleep. Once you are sleeping, you were join Harry's dream. Your mission is to find Mr Potter, and then to kill him, so that he will drop out of his dream."

"_Kill _him? I could never do that!" was Ron's response.

Snape gave him a withering glare. "Death is the only way to drop out of the dream. You are not murdering your friend; you are expediting his transfer from the dream world back into the realm of the living! If you cannot do it, then he will remain dreaming forever!"

"Keep in mind that nothing in that dream world is real. They will all be elements conjured up by Mr Potter's subconscious. For example, the people you will see are projections of his subconscious. His mind's self-defences, if you will. And his projections will not be afraid to do whatever it takes to throw you out."

"To reiterate: the boy's subconscious _will not _recognise us. It _will _see us as foreign bodies and it _will _generate obstacles. His subconscious mind _will _try to make your life in his dream a torturous experience."

"Ideally, we will get in, remain unobtrusive so that his subconscious does not realize that we are the source of the disturbance that they feel, and then we will find Harry, _and kill him_. Once he is dead, his dream should unravel, and we will all find ourselves back here."

"You didn't say anything about potentially torturous experiences either!" Ron lamented. _Gosh, _Ginny thought, _this was going to be a horrible mission._

Snape's black eyes glittered. "Did you want Harry Potter back, or not?"

:::

**_The Dining Room, Grimmauld Place._**

**Sometime before Hogwarts starts.**

**08:10 p.m.**

"Soooo, Tom Riddle," the name was drawled out, in the same way that the bodies of the damned could be wrung and spread over a rack, all prepared for the judicious use of stab-able kitchen utensils. "It's good to see Bellatrix bring someone home. I know you're an unspeakable, but what is it that you do, really?"

Sirius had finished dessert, and was now lounging back in his expensive chair, waving his fork in the air. He had a half-smile on his face, which meant that he was bored, and very much looking for something to stab at. Often, until they exploded or confronted werewolves, as Severus could attest to.

Riddle had that ever polite smile on his face. "I can't tell you very much about what I do, without breaking various important points in my contract, I'm afraid. But I can assure you that for all the rumours about the Department of Mysteries, what we really do is quite tedious, and is nothing interesting to speak about. Research, mostly."

"Uh-huh. And what sort of intentions do you have towards my scion?"

Those words caused the table to erupt in exactly the sort of commotion that Sirius had been hoping for since 5 o'clock that evening. "_Cousin!" _Bellatrix hissed in a sharp voice, slamming her hands down on the table. "Decorum, Bella," was the soft murmur coming from Narcissa. Everyone else sighed and settled down for the show.

"What? My job as Head of the House of Black. Thought you wanted me to be more of a Head and show some more responsibility." Sirius' puppy-dog eyes had been carefully crafted through years and years of practice at Hogwarts, and were practically an art-form in itself. They never had any sort of effect on his relatives.

"I am not some sixteen year old witch, bringing her boyfriend back to her parents, and I certainly don't need your approval!"

Riddle interjected at this point, forcing Sirius to keep the words '_Yeah, it's obvious you're a lot older,_' in his mouth.

"I have nothing, but the purest of intentions, Lord Black."

"Yeah? Tell us about yourself then. Your family, friends, yourself. History and schooling. Religious and political views. You've got thirty seconds. Go."

"I'm an _orphan_. Mother died giving birth, no Father to speak of."

_Oh._

Riddle continued.

"I was born in London's East End. Lived in a muggle orphanage, until I was blood-adopted by a couple who turned out to be the last of the Peverells. They were hiding, due to events at the time. Home-schooled. Graduated. 10 OWLs, 8 NEWTS." Someone whistled.

"Then I went overseas. Germany, Ukraine, Albania. Went back to England, met Bellatrix. I'm a half-blood. Pagan. And I think the Minister's an idiot." There was a lot of laughter at this. It was true though. Minister Fudge wouldn't be able to tell hippogriffs from thestrals. Lucius Malfoy could personally attest to this.

Sirius knew it was ungracious, but he looked at his watch, just to be an arsehole. "Twenty-eight seconds, not bad."

He was immediately scolded by Andromeda. "You made the man spill his guts all over the table. Rude, absolutely rude." Sirius made a face, and turned to his friends, as if to say _'What the hell, why is she yelling at me all of a sudden?' _But he got no support from that quarter. Remus was looking at him in that disappointed way of his, and James shook his head, gesturing to Lily and Narcissa, who, being mothers, were glowering. _Okay, maybe I shouldn't have done that._

Mrs Tonks turned to Riddle. "As the Second-In-Line to the Lordship, I apologize on his behalf. It was crass and unworthy of a Head of a House. Personally, I'm sorry to hear about your birth parents."

_Did Riddle just have that one smile? _Harry thought that Riddle must have had practice, because it had been pasted on for a good half-an-hour now, without showing any signs of slipping.

"I'm fine. It's been a long time, and I've come to terms with it in my own way."

"We-e-ell," the Head of the House of Black cut in again, "Surprise, surprise, I don't actually have any problems with you. Good job Bellatrix, you can keep this one."

Bellatrix scowled. "Why don't you try being interested in him as a person, and asking him about the things he's interested in, instead of trying to keep the spotlight on you?"

Sirius spread his hands, as if to show how accommodating and considerate he was. "Ok, so what do you like?"

"I'll admit to a certain amount of enthusiasm for books and magical artefacts. I have quite the collection at home. It comes with being an unspeakable, you see. I also have something of an interest in history and politics, because I work at the Ministry."

"Okay, so you're a Ravenclaw nerd. I should've guessed, what with the OWLS and NEWTS and the research."

"You could say that." That smile was a little different – indulging, instead of merely frozen.

And this next smile was different too. "Coincidentally, I met your brother recently, and Regulus has been telling me about a locket of his. Supposedly it had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin. I've been meaning to take a look at it for him."

Riddle had that perfect ability to find someone's weak points. He wasn't even trying this time, but he managed to hit on exactly the right topic to make Sirius insecure. "Regulus? Wow, small world. Is he doing ok? I bet him and his wife are having one hell of a honeymoon. I haven't heard from him in a while, we should go and see him sometime."

"He seems to be enjoying Paris."

"But yes, a locket. I don't know anything about a locket, do you Bellatrix?"

She shook her head. "Narcissa, Andromeda?"

Andromeda shrugged her shoulders, but Narcissa looked as though she were thinking. "May I, cousin? If anyone would know about Black heirlooms, it would be the house elves."

Sirius shrugged, and yelled out for Kreacher. The house elf popped in within an instant, appearing to be polite and professional, but this impression only lasted until he caught sight of who was summoning him.

"What does filthy blood-traitor master want from Kreacher?" Kreacher snarled. Sirius suddenly remembered why he usually left it to the girls or Regulus to summon the house elves. This one gave him attitude.

"Now listen here, you little maggot," Sirius was speaking in a low voice, low enough that only Kreacher could hear his words. "My brother has a locket somewhere. It's probably an heirloom. You'll find it, and then you'll bring it to me." Kreacher looked up at Sirius with resentful eyes.

"Kreacher shall be searching." And with that, he clicked his fingers and popped back out.

Sirius tried not to grind his teeth. "It'll probably be a while before the house elf deigns to grace us with his presence again. Until then, does anyone want more dessert?"

:::

Now that everyone's curiosity about the new shiny thing had been satisfied, Sirius' guests quickly got bored, and split up into their own little groups, standing up and swapping chairs, or simply talking to the people next to them.

Remus had stopped by to talk to Harry, and he was asking Harry questions about his school work, and how he felt about the girls in his class, but Harry was obviously distracted. His green eyes would be looking directly at the werewolf and smiling one moment, and then slide sideways the next. Then Harry would catch himself, and pull himself forcibly back into the conversation.

The next time it happened, Remus followed Harry's gaze – to Bellatrix's date, Tom Riddle. He let the conversation die. It took Harry a while to realise, although he quickly looked back at Remus the instant he did. Remus quirked an eyebrow. Harry lifted his own eyebrow back at him, although the effect was ruined by the way he had flushed bright red.

Remus wanted to laugh, but he held it in. "I wondered when you were going to get over Sirius."

If Harry wasn't embarrassed before, he was now. "What?"

"Your mother owes me a few galleons now. She thought it would last until the end of Hogwarts."

Harry gave up. "You and my _mom?_ Who else thinks that I've got a thing for my own godfather?" He remembered something that Ron had said, back in the dorms at Hogwarts.

"It's not a _gay _thing, it's just a – a man-crush. You're allowed to have man-crushes without being gay. Uncle Sirius's got leather jackets and a motorbike, and I think that's wicked awesome, and nothing else."

"And that's another 'man-crush' on Mr Riddle? I don't remember _him_ saying anything about a motorbike."

To be fair, Harry couldn't explain this one.

"He's an unspeakable. That's cool too." He didn't think saying 'why yes, I felt an instant connection from the moment I met him' sounded very good. Uncle Remus was making satisfied 'hmm'-ing sounds, as though he was listening and agreed with everything that Harry said.

"I understand. He's new, and naturally everyone's wondering what he's going to be like. Why don't you go and talk to him then? He's sitting there by himself. You can ask him about his research_._" Remus didn't even try to hold in his vaguely wolf-like smile. "In fact, I insist, as your godfather-by-association."

"No, it's ok. I wouldn't have a clue what he was saying. Also, he gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"Harry, there's nothing wrong about being curious. You should go and introduce yourself. It's only polite."

Uncle Remus was the gentle, thoughtful and considerate Marauder in Dad's group of friends, so Harry gave his suggestion some thought. His mom had even pulled him over one time after a Marauder party, and explicitly told him to follow Uncle Remus' and Professor Snape's example, rather than his Dad's or Uncle Sirius'. He could understand why, since their living room now stunk of cheese, but Harry never liked being told what to do, so he asked her why she married Dad and not Professor Snape then. That was the end of the conversation. Come to think of it...

"Also, the heebie-jeebies?" Remus said, nonchalantly, "Makes you shiver, does he?"

Harry abandoned his train of thought to shove Remus. "Could you stop teasing your poor innocent godchild-by-association for a minute? You make it sound so bad."

Uncle Remus smiled. "It's only my prerogative as a Marauder."

Harry was suspicious. Revelation slowly dawned upon him. "You're going to pummel me about Sirius until I talk to Mr Riddle, aren't you? Why does Mom think that you're the nice guy? You're just more subtle about it."

"Look, I'll go talk to him, only because someone should go and make him feel welcome. But I don't want you to think that it's because of any funny stuff. Because it isn't. Not with Sirius, and not with him."

"Of course not." Remus could be magnanimous in victory. Harry threw him a dubious look. Remus waved to Harry as Harry stood up, and began chatting to Tonks.

:::

Uncle Remus was right, Mr Riddle was sitting alone. Bellatrix had simply pushed him to Lucius and the Malfoys with a 'Lucius works in the Ministry, you can discuss your politics with him,' before dashing off to yell at Sirius some more. The resulting conversation, while interesting, had lasted only five minutes before Lucius apologized and said that he had to be going now, there was an early morning conference in Venezuela that he had to attend. On the other hand, his wife and son would be staying the night. Riddle was gracious or not interested, depending on your point of view, so he waved Lucius away.

At the moment, Tom Riddle seemed like he was perfectly content to observe the room, and lose himself in his thoughts. Harry wondered what he was thinking about.

He pulled out a chair across from Mr Riddle. He was about to plonk himself down on the chair as usual, and sprawl all over the seat, but he thought of Mr Riddle's grace, and mimicked Draco's way of sitting instead, with one foot on the floor, and the other crossed over. Now that he was here though, he couldn't think of a single thing to say to the stranger. _Hello would be a good start._

Riddle saved him. "Hello. If I remember Sirius' introductions right, you would be Harry – James and Lily's son. How are you finding his soiree?"

"It's fine. Aside from you sitting with us at the table, it's mostly the same as it always is, really. We have them at least twice a month, more if Mrs Malfoy wants to throw some too, so nothing really changes between family dinners. I'm still a little disappointed that I miss a fair amount when I leave for school. Though it's rare that everyone's here tonight." Harry tended to run his mouth off when he was nervous, like now.

"Are you at Hogwarts?"

"Yes, I'm going into my sixth year. I'm a Gryffindor. That probably doesn't mean much to you – Hogwarts is split into four houses, and the house I'm in is Gryffindor. We value bravery. When Sirius called you a Ravenclaw before, he was also talking about one of the houses – that house is known for its smarts."

Riddle smiled, a quirk of the lips that looked a little odd, but still recognisably a smile.

"I'm familiar with the Hogwarts schooling system. Most of the unspeakables I work with graduated from Hogwarts. I don't think that Ravenclaw is the house for me though. Books can become very dull if all one does is read all day."

Harry was going to ask him more questions, like 'what house do you think you'd be in, if not Ravenclaw' and 'can you tell me more about being an unspeakable' and even 'how are _you_ finding the family dinners' which he really should've asked from the beginning, but then he caught sight of something.

"The ring on your hand."

"Oh this thing?" Riddle quickly looked down at his hand, and then back up at Harry. "What about it?"

Harry hesitated. "I think I've seen the symbol somewhere before."

"It's not a surprise that it would be familiar to you. It's the Peverell crest."

"Oh, you told us that the Peverells adopted you. But why would their crest be familiar to me?"

Riddle was frowning slightly. "Family is important," he began. He meant it as 'the family you come from is important', but Harry took it as 'the people who you consider family are important. "As such, you should ask your father about your lineage. At one point, there were three Peverell brothers. To understand how significant these brothers were in history, consider that Salazar Slytherin is a descendant of one of those brothers. The Potters – your family – are descended from another brother. That makes us distant cousins, though I wouldn't be able to tell you the degree, or how far removed we are from each other."

"So we're family?"

"Most of the pureblood houses are related to one another. Wizarding Britain isn't that big."

Harry didn't make distinctions between distant cousins and close cousins – family was family. He also didn't notice, but throughout the conversation, he had been leaning closer and closer, to get a better look at the symbol on the ring. He couldn't understand why it was making alarm sirens go off in his head. Harry didn't notice, but Riddle sure did.

Riddle was still looking at him, even as he pulled the ring off for Harry to examine.

"Oh, you didn't have to take it off."

"No, curiosity is a good trait to have. I encourage it in others."

Harry took the ring. The instant his fingers brushed against it, the world froze and turned grey. Harry could tell that his eyes were still open, but they weren't seeing anything in front of him. Something flickered – a snapshot of an old man's withered hand. Then more pictures came, passing through as quickly as lightning strikes the heart. A man screaming. An old hut. A snake head, nailed to the door. His own invisibility cloak. A wand, laid next to a body in a grave. _The stone on the ring could resurrect people from beyond the veil –_

IT'S A DEATHLY HALLOW. It was like Harry had been wandering in the dark, and someone switched a red neon light on. The words flashed red into existence, flickered, and then remained put in his mind. Harry didn't know what a deathly hallow was, he had never even heard of the term. But although he couldn't remember coming across the word, he knew that the sentence was true – he felt it with a surety. It echoed and reverberated throughout his head. There was something else in his head, something that he was missing – but it fled.

The sound of people chattering trickled back in. Harry heaved a small sigh. The entire episode felt like it had gone on for a while, but really, it had only been a few seconds. "Wow."

Riddle laughed. "It's nothing amazing. I've inspected it and I can say there's no power or anything attached to the ring. I wear it for sentimental reasons."

_So the Resurrection Stone doesn't work anymore? _"Is that because the stone's cracked? That's no good."

"That had already happened when I found it."

The crack could probably be fixed. Harry wanted to know how Mr Riddle had found the Stone. One of the most powerful items in the Wizarding world, and it was here, sitting on his palm. He wondered if Riddle knew what it was worth. Then he mentally slapped himself. Of course he did, the man said that he collected artefacts, and the Resurrection Stone was one of the most prized of artefacts. Riddle had just extended to him a great trust in even letting him handle the Stone, and here he was, thinking about the power it held.

Harry had no desire for power, nor any need to resurrect anyone. Even his grandparents were alive, although his dad's parents didn't like his mom, and his mom's parents didn't like his dad. He didn't need the Resurrection Stone. So Harry held his hand out guilelessly, although still wide-eyed with awe, and waited for Riddle to take back his ring.

Just as casually, Riddle slipped it back onto his finger.

"Thanks. So I'm related to the line of Slytherin? Maybe that explains something."

"And what does it explain?" Riddle asked, humouring him.

"Well, the talking to snakes thing. Dad had always said that it was a Slytherin blood trait, and something that could only be genetically-inherited or passed on through very dark magic. He completely freaked out on Mom when he found out I could do it."

"Talking to snakes." Harry was still remembering his Dad's reaction and how he wouldn't calm down until the paternity results came back, so he completely missed the expression that passed over Riddle's face.

"Yeah. It doesn't weird you out, does it?"

"Say something in parseltongue then."

Harry sighed. _/I know that humans think snake-speak is a sign of a bad person. You think I'm evil./_

"Au contraire, Harry." Riddle gave a conspirative smile. /_I don't think being able to snake-speak has anything to do with whether a person is a bad person or not./_

Harry jerked in surprise. In his shock, Harry accidentally up-ended someone's glass of orange juice, and it would have spilled over the floor, except Riddle froze the liquid mid-air and did some sort of fancy time-manipulation trick to bring the glass back to how it was. /_You are a speaker as well!/_

"It was always thought that the ability originated from Salazar Slytherin, and his dark experiments. However, if you, excuse me, _we_ can speak it, then it proves that the language of parseltongue originated from a time before Salazar, although he is the person who is most associated with it. Perhaps it was a latent trait that the Peverells carried, that manifested in Salazar. It's fascinating, that a recessive gene should reappear, after so many years."

Harry was amazed. He hadn't been this excited in a very long time. "Could you go and explain that to my dad? Tell him that Parseltongue is a Peverell thing and not a Slytherin thing? It doesn't mean much coming from me, but I mean, you're not a Slytherin, or a descendant of Slytherin, and you can speak it, so he'll believe you."

"Being a Slytherin isn't a bad thing. The Malfoys are all Slytherins and you remain good friends with Draco, aren't you? Do you think him evil?"

Harry looked across the room and found Draco, who was pestering his Aunt Andromeda. "Sorry, I didn't mean for it to come out that way. It's just what my dad thinks. Can you talk to him, please?"

"I'm normally a very busy person."

_Glub, glub, glub. _That was the sound of Harry's heart, sinking like a dead-weight stone.

"But, us parselmouths, we have to look after one another, don't we? I also think it's a downright shame that you have learnt to despise this ability, instead of revering it as the gift it is."

_Was that a 'yes, I'll talk to your dad?' _Riddle seemed to come to a decision. "How about this? I have a snake. Her name is Nagini, and she is a beautiful creature, even for her species. Would you like to meet her? I think she would welcome the chance to talk to another speaker."

"Sure, I'd love to meet Nagini."

"I'll bring her over to Grimmauld Place in a week then. I'll talk to your father at the same time."

_That was a yes. Thank you, Mr Riddle. _So who cared if the man smiled like he had been practicing in a mirror? He was amazing. Who needed a motorbike? He was still amazing. He had a _snake_, and he could _talk _to it, like Harry. Harry couldn't remember when, but he had a really cool conversation with a Brazilian Boa Constrictor once. Or was it a Burmese Python? They were friendly – he had liked them. What would Nagini be like?

As soon as Riddle finished the sentence, there was an outcry from Sirius' part of the room. "Hey Tom, Bella's back, with Kreacher!" Tom nodded to acknowledge that he heard Sirius, and they both stood up. As Riddle was walking across the room, he looked back over his shoulder, and said one last thing to Harry.

"Bellatrix has my gratitude, for allowing me to meet you. I think I should like to get to know you more."

:::

Everyone had gathered in the same area, to witness the conclusion to this night's events. They called Kreacher to attention. They asked about the locket. And after some threatening and cajoling, he presented it to them.

Sirius was the first to comment. "Huh, it looks like it's been stabbed."

And then Harry got sledge-hammered. Well, he didn't literally get sledge-hammered, but it certainly felt like someone had hit him in the head with one. _Ouch_. He keeled over, both hands pressing down hard onto his forehead. To top it off, he proceeded to overbalance and fell over, adding several bruises on his leg to his wonderful collection of pain.

His mother jumped to her feet. "Harry! What happened? Are you okay Harry?" (On the other hand, Malfoy five feet away was grinning in glee. Harry could picture Malfoy crowing 'You _fainted!_' at him for the next few family events.)

Harry left one hand on his head, and used the other one to wave his mom away. "Yeah, just. Sudden headache." It was dying down. He tried for a sheepish smile. "Brain freeze. Too much ice cream."

James Potter, who was also on edge for a minute there, relaxed. "Ah, my Lily-flower, you worry over him too much. He's about to go into sixth year! He's not a kid anymore." Next to Harry, Azalea added "Does that mean that I can have all your ice-cream from now on?"

Sirius was still holding the locket, and dangling it from his fingers. "Hey, he's ok. So Tom, I guess this is the locket that Regulus was talking about. Though I'm also thinking that this was not what it looked like when Regulus first found it–" _MERLIN _sudden spike of pain, going through Harry's head, " – wonder where Regulus got this thing?"

If Harry could think properly at the moment, he would've been extremely worried. Sudden headaches occurring with the kind of intensity he was feeling at the moment is usually not a good sign – in the wizarding world, it could mean anything from brutal leglimency to incompatible compulsions. In the muggle world, it was a symptom of brain hemmorhaging. _It wasn't fading. It was getting worse._

"Would you mind if I took a closer look?"

"Would I mind? Hey, you can keep it." Sirius threw the locket to Tom, and although his aim was horrible, Tom's reflexes were excellent. He caught the locket with one hand, before it hit the floor.

"Not sure you'll be able to get anything out of it the way it's been damaged though. Sorry."

Riddle's complete lack of expression could've been considered extremely disconcerting. He straightened up. "I've received a lot of apologies today. I'm afraid I must make one of my own. It's getting late."

Bellatrix immediately protested, moving just as quickly, and hanging on to one arm. Her ringlets bounced with the movement. "Won't you stay the night?" Riddle responded by looking at the hand she had placed on his person, and back at Bellatrix. She removed it.

"No, I've other things I ought to be doing, Bella," he stated. Then he turned to look at Harry. "I should be back in a week's time." As he left the room with the locket in one hand, he used the other to quickly brush by Harry's hair, in an offhanded, lazy manner. His headache disappeared abruptedly.

"Huh. That was extremely strange."

"No Potter, it just so happens that when anyone sees your scraggly excuse for hair, they can't help but try _fix _it. To no avail." Great, Malfoy was coming over to talk about the fainting thing. Also, bloody hell, what was it with people and his hair? It looked messy and untamed _because _all these people kept on messing it up.

Draco smirked as if he knew what Harry was thinking "That's why I keep my hair gelled back, loser." Harry scowled.

:::

**_Diagon Alley, Alternate London._**

**Sometime before Hogwarts starts.**

**10:16 a.m.**

The sky was too blue. That was the first thing George noticed when he popped into the dream world. It was like someone had been playing with graphics-manipulating charms, and accidentally set the contrast too high.

Looking around, George thought that it would be easy to remember that he was in a dream. There would be spots that were alright, and other spots that had such an intensity of colour that it hurt to physically look at them directly, and other spots which were greyed out.

_Red, grey, orange, purple, blue. Grey. Grey. Grey. Rainbow. Blue._

This effect would make for an interesting Wizarding Wheeze. He turned around to ask Fred about it, except Fred wasn't there. He met Bill's empathetic gaze instead, a few more feet down the path, and turned his head forward.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Grimmauld Place, Alternate London._**

**Sometime before Hogwarts starts.**

**9:38 p.m.**

The adults got roaring drunk after Riddle left, or more like, the Marauders got roaring drunk and Mr Tonks got sucked into their group. Normally Professor Snape would sit and chat with Mr Malfoy, but since Draco's father was gone today on business, Professor Snape amongst the ladies – it seemed as though Harry's mom and Draco's mom never ran out of things to tell him.

And normally, Bellatrix would've been keen to share and spread knife-edge rumours about this and that, but tonight, she seemed like she was halfway to 'wasted.' _He's never going to want to come back again, _she groused every now and then. _Sirius, this is your fault._

Harry and Draco were left to their own devices. Since Nymphadora was off baby-sitting Azalea, the two thought to go through the box of knick-knacks that Kreacher had dug up with Regulus' locket. They found a house-elf head with lipstick. Harry wondered why it wasn't hanging up with the other heads, and Draco thought the whole thing was distasteful and wouldn't touch it.

The adults got louder and louder. Harry took a break for a minute and went back into the kitchen to get himself a cup of water. He washed his hands while he was at it, and incidentally spotted Professor Snape watching the group with sharp, sharp eyes. And then Snape smiled.

The sight was odd enough to make Harry turn his head. _Oh, the Exploding Snap cards have come out_, he thought idly.

Harry could hear his mom groan from the kitchen. "Severus. No."

"I thrive on the sound of misery early in the morning. I live for it. If they didn't want to be beaten so thoroughly, they should know better to gamble when drunk."

Harry's mom shook her head, but she was smiling. Harry knew she wasn't upset in the slightest.

"What's taking so long?" Draco pops his head in. "Ah. The cards."

By twelve midnight, Professor Snape was well on the way to cleaning out the whole table, with the exception of Uncle Remus. This was because Remus had Azalae picking up his cards for him 'because you're good luck' and Professor Snape didn't want Azalae to start crying when Remus started losing.

It was a cheap trick. Harry remembered when he used to pick up his dad's cards, and then Sirius's – two rounds later they'd magically start winning again.

"You and Draco should get to bed," Lily said, when she noticed the boys hovering over the card table.

"It's only twelve," Draco tried to say. "Crabbe and Goyle stay up much later than that."

"And this isn't Crabbe or Goyle's house, love," Lily replied. "Off you go."

Grimmauld Place was very big and had enough bedrooms for everyone. Harry's family had pretty much occupied the same guest bedroom from when Sirius became old enough to inherit the house. It was at the point where Harry's mom had decided it was more practical to move half her clothes into the closet there, and she had bought new curtains specifically for this bedroom. Harry's dad had some Auror robes here as well.

Harry could remember several summers where they didn't go home for weeks.

Secretly, Harry thought that it made Sirius happy; there'd always been too many empty rooms at Grimmauld Place, and ever since Narcissa, Andromeda and Regulus all got married and moved out, it felt even emptier. There was only Bellatrix now, and Uncle Sirius had never really gotten on very well with her.

_Bellatrix. What do I know about her?_

A memory came to mind. In the memory, Harry couldn't have been more than four years, and he'd been all dressed up for a special occasion. The adults were all gathered in one room, and his mother had pushed him up to a stunning lady, who shook his very tiny hand. There'd been a different man standing next to her, one who was cold and impassive, and he didn't say anything to Harry when Harry tentatively said 'Hi.' _She was introduced to me as Mrs Lestrange._

Draco had dragged him out of the room, to show him something or other, and then they were running around. They ran back into the lounge room with all the adults. Because Harry was trying to look behind himself and run at the same time, he'd tripped over something – he didn't remember what. It would've been fine, except Draco tripped over _him_, and consequently, flew onto the table.

Of course, the drinks went careening over half the guests.

Harry's mom and dad stood up to scold him, but Mr Lestrange was the one who acted on reflex; he sent a blow to the side of Harry's head and kicked Draco halfway across the room.

Harry didn't remember much after this; most of it was a blur. _There was a lot of crying. And an awful lot of yelling. _Everyone in the room had stopped to yell at each other. Mrs Malfoy ended up ushering them both into their shared bedroom, where his mom came by later with healing potions and ice cream.

He never saw Mrs Lestrange at Grimmauld Place after that. _He thought we were house elves, _Draco said. It took some years before Harry met her again at Malfoy Manor. He learned over time that her name was actually Bellatrix, and that she was Sirius's cousin and Draco's aunt.

Aside from that, Harry didn't know any details. Draco would know more.

_And now she's met a new person. It's pretty cool how Riddle can talk to snakes, like me. I hope they get married._

Unease. His stomach boiled over with the sensation. Harry groans, rolls over onto his stomach and tries to suffocate himself with the pillow. _Don't tell me I'm jealous. What the fuck._

_Doesn't mean I'll _do _anything. I'm a teenager, these things are supposed to be completely normal. Kind of._

_This is too much thinking before bedtime. I'll see him again in a week anyway._

:::

**_The Dining Room, Grimmauld Place._**

**A few weeks into the Summer Holiday. **

**4:15 p.m.**

"Harry, are you alright?" His mom asked, a couple of days later.

Harry was eating dinner with his sister at the table. "Yeah mom, I'm fine," he replied. It was … mostly true. "I just haven't been sleeping right lately."

That was when the doorbell rung. James Potter came walking in, took off his Auror robes and stretched. "What a mess," he said, and settled down on the couch. Sirius came in only a moment later.

"What's a mess?" Lily replied.

"Diagon Alley," Sirius said, in a voice that was rougher than usual. "At the Weasley's shop. The joke store that Molly's twins thought up?"

"Was anyone hurt?" That was Lily, asking and brewing tea at the same time.

James nodded. "About thirty. Most of them were bystanders on the street. The perpetrators are dead."

Harry was in the middle of meticulously copying a diagram of the St Johns Wort plant for herbology, but he looked up when he heard the news. It sounded serious. Diagon Alley was the most popular shopping district for witches and wizards, the Wizarding equivalent of muggle Oxford St or Convent Garden. If people died there yesterday – everyone must be talking about it.

The young Gryffindor slid his diagrams into a folder and closed the textbook. "What happened? Were you there?"

"We still don't know what happened," Sirius responded in James' stead. "The aurors didn't get called in until it was all over. Hearsay says that one of Fred's customers got violent." He accepted the tea that Lily hands him, and looked at her. "That's not the bit that worries us; customers get violent all the time."

Lily made an inquisitive noise. James picked up from where Sirius had left the conversation.

"We're worried that they were using polyjuice."

Harry looked back and forth between the others in the room, and waited for someone to speak. Even Azalea was peering over her plate at the adults – Harry remembered something Hermione said about children being intuitive; they didn't know what was wrong, but they knew that something was. And there was something – off.

"…That means," Harry said slowly, "That these strangers are trying to deceive others?" What was the significance of Polyjuice? Harry wasn't getting it.

The adults looked at each other.

"There are many ways to conceal yourself." James replied. "We've got an invisibility cloak, disillusionment charms, glamours, transfiguration, animagi. None of these are fool-proof. But if you want the most success, you'll go for polyjuice, and for polyjuice to be successful, there will be other people missing."

"I know what you're thinking Lily," Sirius interrupted, "and I agree - the M.O. sounds awfully familiar. However, no one's declared anything, so it might not be anything. It could've been just a one-off."

The moment passed. It was like the sun coming out after an eclipse. Everyone was worried for a moment that the world would lapse into eternal darkness, but the first time you see the sun again, the fear disappears completely. Dinner was reassuringly normal, although there were people missing at dinner – work, friends, other commitments.

Professor Snape had news – "There have been some unusual reports of strangers loitering on Hogwarts grounds. However, as the perpetrators have since stopped and there is no one at that castle right now, the issue is being dismissed."

Sometime after, Harry's mom left the table to answer a phone call from her sister, who was apparently furious at coming home to wrecked furniture and broken plates. Apparently his aunt had become the victim of a home invasion. Mom asked Aunt Petunia if her family wanted to stay at Godric's Hollow for the time being, since the Potters were at Grimmauld Place, but her sister only hung up in response.

"Where are all these home invasions coming from?" his dad muttered after Lily told him the story.

Harry had a bit of time after dinner, so he made a floo-call to Ron. Ron made a joke and then said his brothers were fine, they were loving the extra attention actually. Everything seemed fine.

:::

**_The Dining Room, Grimmauld Place._**

**A few days after. **

**8:05 a.m.**

It's been a week, and Mr Riddle's due to come back. It would probably be a good idea to tell his dad about Mr Riddle, so Harry went inside and tried to think of things he could say to his Dad. Harry practiced them in front of an old golden-framed mirror in a spare bedroom.

_Dad, do you remember Mr Riddle from a week ago? I was talking to him about families and he told me something really interesting about the Peverells._ Dad's not interested.

_Dad, I was talking to Mr Riddle and he says he wants to meet you. Talk to you about me._ No, that sounds too much like the time Harry was out after curfew and Professor McGonagall wanted to talk to Dad. Not a good memory.

_Dad, Mr Riddle says that he can talk to snakes too. And also, he's bringing his gigantic snake over._ Well, he could say that if he wanted Dad to fly into a rage.

_Merlin_, Harry thought. _I bet Hermione never had this much trouble_. He looked back into the mirror, somehow expecting to see his mother and father standing on either side of him, but of course, this is not the same kind of mirror. His reflection yawned.

_Maybe I should leave the actual talking to Mr Riddle. He seems better at it anyway._

Instead, he snapped at Draco in the parlour, he snapped at Kreacher during lunch, and then he snapped at Azalea playing with her dolls, who promptly went running off to Mrs Malfoy.

:::

Fortunately, Mrs Malfoy's never been one for long lectures.

"Harry," she said mildly, writing out letters to owl at her desk with white-gloved hands. She didn't even look up at him.

"If you've nothing better to say, you shouldn't say anything at all. If you've nothing to do, then you should start on your summer homework." It wasn't a suggestion.

"Someone's finally showed their face around here," Draco remarked as Harry walked on by. The dining room table was covered with Harry's books. He didn't like working in the library – you never knew when a book would start screaming at you.

"How come she's not making you do your work?"

"Favouritism. And technically, I've been working on Potions throughout the morning. I deserve a break."

Harry scowled. "You mean you've been hanging about while Snape brews potions."

"Do you think Uncle Severus actually lets me do that? Mother came by, saw the state of my hands and demanded I cease immediately." Draco took the seat beside him, although Harry was doing his best to look fiercely unwelcome. "He was also wondering where you were."

"No. I get enough of potions at school." Besides, Harry knew from past experience, that Draco would whine and whine, and in the end, Harry would end up doing almost all the work without any of the credit. When Harry, Draco and the Professor were in a room together, someone always inevitably stalked off in a rage. "Hey, when did Newton Scamander die? It was sometime when we were at Hogwarts, wasn't it?"

Draco stood up abruptly. "What do you know, it turns out that I do have something to do today. Crabbe and Goyle were thinking of going to Fortescue's. I'll floo them and say I'm coming after all."

"Malfoy, you arse!"

"We-e-e-e-e-ll," Draco stretched out the word, dangling the syllables, "you could come with me."

It made Harry suspicious. _Why are you inviting me along on one of your group outings?_ "As tempting as your offer is, I've still got a whole essay to write about Acacia and the effects of the moon."

"I'll help you with the essay." That's it, there had to be something in it for Draco as well.

Draco noticed the look, and caved. "Oh fine, Mother says that she'll let me go as long as you'll come with me. What she's afraid of, I'll never know."

Harry looked at his work and looked at the afternoon sun shining through a window. It didn't take him long to make a decision.

:::

**_Diagon Alley, Alternate London._**

**A few weeks into the Summer Holiday. **

**3:49 p.m.**

Although Narcissa had been saying things like 'stay together boys' and 'make sure you look out for Draco, Harry, he's a little bit delicate' at the floo, Draco didn't pay any of it the slightest attention. By the time Harry went through the floo, Draco's coat-tails were disappearing from the door.

It was fine with Harry. He needed to buy a few new quills and maybe shop for birthday presents for his Hogwarts friends. It was lucky that he had a place to go back home to in the summer; there were people who stayed at Hogwarts all summer long.

He was walking around the fiction section of Flourish and Blotts, meaning to buy a book for his mom, when he saw the most unlikely person.

Harry blinked. _Nope, he's still there. What's he doing in a bookshop? I thought he got Hermione to do all his book shopping nowadays._

"Ron?"

Ron jumped from where he was browsing the aisles about dreams and psychology. "Harry!" It was funny how Ron looked up and down the aisle, checking to see if people were watching, before he jumped and gave Harry a very enthusiastic bear-hug.

"Hey," Harry replied, laughing. It was unusual for Ron to be so friendly, but hey, he would take it. "Not that that wasn't nice, but what's the occasion?"

"Nothing. It's just good to see you, mate."

Ron was smiling, but he also looked like he was about to cry. Harry abruptly felt terrible; obviously, his brothers getting attacked in public was affecting him more than he thought.

"Yeah sure, spoken like you didn't floo Grimmauld Place just two days ago. What is it – Hermione isn't pregnant, is she?"

"What? No! No!"

Ron's face showed exactly what he thought about the idea, and Harry couldn't help it, he started laughing again, and after a moment, Ron followed him and yeah, this was more like it, friends having a good time and cheering each other up. _Bloody Hell, you're going to give me a heart attack one day if you keep on doing these things_, Ron said, and Harry grinned.

"So what've you been up to?"

"Oh, you know, the usual," Ron replied. "There's the death eaters coming after us with bloody pitchforks in their hands, getting harassed by people on the street, and Voldemort being up to who-knows-what, who-knows-where –"

Harry frowned. None of it sounded very good, but –

"Voldemort? Who's Voldemort?"

Ron looked absolutely gob-smacked. It was as though Harry could not have surprised him more, even if he showed up stark naked wearing the Sorting Hat on the first day of school.

"Who's Voldemort," he mutters. "Merlin."

Tongue-in-cheek, Harry said: "Voldemort is Merlin?"

"No, you great, big, stupid idiot. Voldemort's the monster that killed your parents. The Dark Lord who's terrorising all of Wizarding London. Don't even joke about it."

Something nudged at the side of Harry's head, but he pushed it down. Hard. His parents are alive, that wasn't negotiable. Ron had a tendency to be insensitive at times. He was being insensitive now.

"If anything, you're going to give me a heart attack! Don't go around saying things like that! I saw Mom and Dad just this morning." And they were safe.

He could remember Dad getting up early, and he remembered hearing Sirius and his dad talk before they left the house. Remus left next because he had a shift at the hospital and then Draco's aunt Andromeda. Mom had been scribbling something down with a quill – she had to do some heavy-duty charm work for another new client.

"I mean, I know Dad and Uncle Sirius has been working longer hours lately, but I don't think it's anything too dangerous. Malfoy's dad works in the Ministry, Riddle's an unspeakable. If something happened, at least one of them would've said something at dinner."

Ron gave him a strange look. "I don't know who Riddle is… but since when did you start eating dinner with Malfoy's dad?"

Harry returned the look evenly. "…Since we're all staying at Grimmauld's over the summer?" Harry replied, trying to judge if maybe Ron's older brothers have accidentally 'confunded' him again. "Uncle Sirius's invited everyone over. Since Draco's mom is his cousin, all the Malfoys are there. All the Tonks. Bellatrix and Riddle. Uncle Remus. And my family. I don't know what Snape's doing there, but he comes by too."

For a moment, Ron looked like he was about to scream. He shook his head, pinched his nose, took a deep breath in instead.

"I don't believe this. Your perfect world is a place where everyone gets along like fluffy bunnies and puppies. Listen, it's been great, but we need to get you out of here."

Harry nodded. Yes, Harry needed to take Ron back to the Burrow, because it was really easy for a person to hurt themselves when they were confounded. Until then, it would be best to go along with Ron's suggestions. At least there would be at least one person looking out for him.

"Okay sure, where were you thinking of going?"

Ron responded by dragging Harry's arm down a little, almost-deserted section of Diagon Alley. The only person around was an old chubby woman, sweeping the dirt from her doorstep. There was an inn here, one that was known for asking no questions, where all the transactions are done by owl.

Harry frowned again. _Ron's certainly been mixed up in some kind of trouble. But I don't know if this is because of the twins. _

"Ha," Ron said once he's closed the door. "I almost can't do it."

"Okay, you've been acting strangely this whole time and I think we should really get back to your Mom's," Harry started. His best friend smiled and leaned back against the door. Watching. Harry watched him right back, and now that they were eye to eye – Ron's eyes were a little too clear for a confundus spell.

"You know you can tell me anything right?" Harry said, slowly. "You can tell me anything and I'll help you. Me and Hermione."

"You can help me," Ron said. "By waking up." And then – "Petrificus Totalus."

And that was it. Harry couldn't think, he didn't know what was going on and his whole body had frozen and fallen onto the ground. _Ron, what are you doing_, he wanted to yell, but his mouth wouldn't move.

_He isn't so out of it that he would attack me, is he?_

The next few minutes were a blur. From his position on the floor, Harry could see the old woman on the street, and her head was pointed to the sky like a bloodhound. He hoped that she noticed something through the grubby window. _There's something wrong_, Harry tried to tell her with the force of his mind. _Help me._

He could hear Ron moving behind him. He was talking, he was saying sorry or something, Harry wasn't focusing. And then he was saying the first few syllables of the killing curse.

"Avada Keda –" At the last instant, the old woman surprised Harry by crashing through the door. Ron went down in a flying heap, but it was already too late.

"—vra!"

The acid green light was the last thing Harry saw.

:::


	4. Chapter 4

**_Elsewhere._**

Harry was walking in a marketplace. The stalls were made up of wood, metal and cloth and behind them were strange dark figures hawking their gear.

A tentacle catches on his arm, 'I have a special for you,' the thing said, and Harry smiled but said he wasn't interested. 'You will be. Everyone is, in the end,' it promises and leaves.

Most of the things around him are curious, but not something Harry feels he needs to buy straight away. What would he do with a decapitated head? The colour in someone's eyes? His own were already colourful.

Harry was about to leave when he saw a glimpse of something white in the middle of the next stall. It was a flask with clear glass walls, and a silver-white liquid swirled inside, like mercury.

"What's that?" he asked the stall owner.

The person behind the stall had red eyes and a smile with far too many teeth. His hand was scaly and white, and his fingers were thin.

"This flask?" he said, picking it up. "It isn't for sale."

"Why would you leave it out if it's not for sale?" Harry asked again.

"Push it away, Harry Potter," the snake-man laughed. "It's not something that you want."

:::

**_Harry's bedroom, Grimmauld Place._**

**Two days after the attack. **

**4:57 p.m.**

Harry woke up in stages.

There was a moment of double vision – he's seen this room before, with its cracked walls and water-stained floors. It had been covered in cobwebs. It flashes and fades. All the cracks smooth out, the water-stains change colour, and the cobwebs disappear until the wallpaper turns a uniform grey-blue.

He put one hand on his forehead. Slid it down his face. Then he realised he wasn't wearing glasses; it should be impossible to see every detail of the room. He looked up – everything was blurred. Situation normal.

The next moment, the room was darker and there were people around somewhere, talking in low hushed voices. The covers were warm and someone's hand was playing with his hair and for a second, Harry thought about dropping right back into sleep.

Red hair caught at the edge of his field of view.

"Mom?" Harry yawned. "What time is it?" All the voices stopped at once for a moment.

"Hey baby," and that was his mom's voice, he could recognise it now. "It's nearly five. It's okay, you're safe, go back to sleep," she was saying, and Harry turned to look at her. Her eyes were worried and a Viridian green – they always turned that colour when –

_Someone was laughing. 'Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!' his mom was screaming, pleading and then HE SPOKE, the murderer, HE said 'stand aside', but his mom wouldn't do that – the blinding green light – _

_YOU SHOULD HEAR HOW SHE DIED, BEGGING FOR MERCY. _

"Harry!" his father was yelling and the sound jolted Harry out of his – daydream? Conscious waking nightmare? "Everything's alright," James was saying, but how could that be, when Harry remembered –

"I got hit with the Killing curse," Harry whispered. There were things around him but he couldn't see them anymore. "I should be dead."

"No baby, you're fine, look you're here, you're okay now," Lily was saying, repeating over and over again, running her fingers over his shoulders like she could convince him through contact alone.

"You don't get it, mom, I should be dead!" Harry shrieked. "I saw the Avada Kedavra coming, I felt my heart _stop beating_, I should be dead!"

But that wasn't right. That wasn't how the story went.

"You both should be dead too, James and Lily," Harry said, without realising it, and the instant he said it, he wanted to take it back, but it was true, wasn't it?

The room fell silent. Harry couldn't stop shaking. He couldn't bring himself to raise his head and look at his parents. Something that Ron said stuck with him – they were killed.

Who was the woman sitting next to him then, whispering into his ears?

"Who are they, Sirius, where's my mom and dad?" Harry was saying. The shaking turned into something else, Harry was breathing faster and faster now, almost hyperventilating and he just wanted everyone to go away and disappear –

"What on Earth," his dad was saying, and his mom was holding onto his shoulders even more tightly than before. 'He's in shock' – that was Uncle Remus, his voice was always soothing and gentle, it had something to do with him being a werewolf and always trying to come across as non-threatening, Remus saying other things to his dad as well.

'Let me talk to him,' Sirius was saying in the background, "He'll probably want some water, can you go and get him some water Lily?"

Remus said something again and finally, his mom and dad left the room. When they left, something in Harry broke and he was scrabbling, trying to get out of the bed, and Sirius stopped him, by moving into the way. Since Sirius was right there, Harry just fell into him, and before he could move, Sirius had wrapped his arms around him.

Harry's head was against Sirius' chest. He could feel the other man's heartbeat, and the solid line of his arms and shoulders as his Godfather shifted to get a better hold. Remus was behind him, murmuring soft things, and slowly, Harry began to calm down.

"You weren't hit by the Killing Curse," Sirius started. "You just got the afterwash of it. Enough to knock you out but not enough to kill you."

"It was also enough to leave you with nightmares, I see," Remus said.

Harry didn't say anything.

"The guy who did it – he wasn't your friend. Ron was at the Burrow the whole time this was happening. His mother didn't want him leaving the house after what happened to his brothers. Do you understand?"

Harry still didn't say anything.

Sirius let out a breath. "You might not feel particularly safe right now, and that's okay. But we got the SOB who did it, he's dead and he's not going to be going after you again."

"Everyone in this house loves you," Remus added. "We've all been worried about you and we're all glad you're alright."

"I didn't mean to worry anyone," Harry finally replied.

"Worrying about you is a privilege, not an obligation," Remus said, and Sirius laughed. "Yeah, you know Moony's right. Everyone loves you and you know it, Prongslet. Even old Snivellus."

Sirius broke away from the hug, set Harry out at arm's length. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "I don't know, I just had a really bad nightmare. I haven't been sleeping well. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – freak out on everyone like that."

"You tell your mom and dad 'sorry' and I'm good," his Godfather continued, and with that, both of his Uncles left the room to talk to his parents.

Harry watched them leave and didn't know what to think. He knew he had been hit with the Killing Curse. He knew. But now that everyone was telling him he hadn't been – Harry wasn't so sure anymore.

The ceiling was off-white. It was uniform the whole way across, with little tiny details hand-carved into the stone. Harry didn't know why he thought there should've been cracks in the stonework.

"I'm thinking too much about this," Harry told himself. "Nightmares can be terrifying but the best thing about them is – they aren't real."

:::

Time passed in a haze. Since there wasn't anything wrong with him physically, Harry was free to come and go from his room. He thought about getting his broomstick out and flying around the block, but when he got to the front door, a sudden attack of nerves got to him and he went back. Harry went to his parent's room instead, sat in his dad's chair and flipped on his mom's gramophone. Went through her records.

They were mostly old love songs. Harry put a random one on and let himself drift.

He was vaguely aware of the front door opening and closing and opening and closing again, Azalea laughing somewhere in the house.

The song was coming to a close, when Bellatrix started screaming upstairs. Harry's whole body jerked – he was so surprised – but because he was also a Gryffindor, his first instinct was to run to the source of the trouble. He met Sirius at the bottom of the stairs and they ran up together, bolting to the hallway with Bellatrix's room.

Sirius got there first. He had longer legs. Harry almost ran into his back when Sirius stopped.

"That's new," he said.

It was Riddle. He was holding onto a duffel bag. And he had a large – no, absolutely gigantic – snake wrapped about his shoulders and waist. Parts of the body, which were as thick as Harry's thigh, hung over both of Riddle's forearms and the tail fell from Riddle's shoulder almost to the ground. Nagini was twelve feet long, with a body that shimmered khaki-green and brown.

"What. Is that?" Bellatrix yelled. "You said you were bringing your things over!"

The snake turned its head to look at Bellatrix.

"Don't mind Nagini," Riddle said, dropping the duffel at the door, and dipping his hand into his pockets for keys. "She's perfectly tame, house-trained and more intelligent than most people, I wager. I'll leave her inside the room and then we may both proceed downstairs."

Bellatrix cocked one hip. Put both hands on her waist. _Trouble_, Harry read.

"Where were you planning on leaving it?" she said, in a voice as sweet as sugar. "On the bed? I notice you don't have a carrier for it."

"She isn't going to move if I tell her not to," Riddle responded, with just the slightest hint of irritation in his voice.

"When I asked you to move in with me," Bellatrix explained slowly, "I meant toothbrushes. Clothes. I didn't mean, bring your big, bloody venomous snake over."

The snake hissed sharply – '_Insolence_!' Harry heard, before Riddle calmed her down. 'Shhh,' he crooned. '_Pay no attention to her words; she simply doesn't understand how beautiful you are,_' Riddle hissed softly, almost too soft to be audible. He was stroking her scales, and Harry had the sudden thought that Bellatrix's relationship with Riddle wasn't going to last very long at all.

More people were climbing the stairs now; the domestic was louder than Harry knew. Lily and Narcissa didn't seem too happy at seeing the snake either.

"There are children in the house," Bellatrix continued. "Why did you thing bringing your snake over was in any way a good idea?"

"Harry wanted to meet Nagini," Riddle said. He paused. "I heard about what happened and thought I'd bring Nagini in. Should I not have?"

"Harry!" Lily yelled. She looked like she wanted to give Harry a lecture right there and then, but was much too polite to do so in front of guests.

Sirius though. Sirius had always been on Harry's side. "Hey, hey, calm down Lils. It's my house. I'm saying it's fine. I'm sure she's tame. Does she bite?"

"No," was Riddle's answer. "Nagini is a Burmese Python. They're very easy-going. She's a big baby, she gets scared of everything. You won't see her slithering around the house."

'_I'll show them scared_,' Nagini hissed again, '_I'll eat one of their little ones and we'll see who's scared,_' she said and Tom quickly hushed her again. Harry might've raised an eyebrow.

Lily backed off, but only a little. "If Sirius says it's fine—"

"—I do—"

"—then I won't argue. But you, young man," Harry cringed, "we're going to have a long talk about appropriate and inappropriate things to ask someone you've only just met."

"Mom! He was offering!"

:::

Bellatrix had to leave shortly before dinner. Harry wondered if that wasn't because of him – the snake was only there because he asked – and he went to tell her 'sorry.'

Out of all the Black sisters, she was the one Harry was the least closest with, and some of it had to do with her leaving the house after her divorce. He figured they'd need time to get used to each other.

"Don't worry your little head about it," Bellatrix told him when he expressed his regrets. "He does whatever he wants."

She patted him on the shoulder before she walked off; Harry noticed that she walked like a catwalk model, all straight backs and swinging hips. He grinned a bit, partly because the acknowledgement was always nice, and partly because Bellatrix favoured very close-fitting dresses.

Dinner was a normal affair this time, with all the Black house elves back and working. What was unusual was the way his dad stopped everyone before dessert and banged his spoon against his glass.

"There's going to be a public announcement tomorrow, but it won't hurt anyone to hear it a day early," James began. "It's related to what happened to my son today."

This got everyone's attention.

"This is before your time, Harry, Draco, Azalea, but back when I was at Hogwarts, there was a strange series of disappearances."

Murmuring started around the table. Harry caught Draco's eyes across the table; he looked equally baffled. It seemed like everyone knew what his dad was talking about except for the kids.

"I remember these," Andromeda was saying. "There was a very secret and exclusive group. They called themselves 'the Order of the Phoenix.' Supposedly it was a self-help society, a way to discard your old life and be reborn, like a phoenix."

Sirius shook his head. "It's not a self-help society. It's a suicide cult."

Harry had been thinking about dessert. He hadn't been thinking about what happened to him in Diagon Alley at all.

"Why would anyone form a suicide cult?" Dora Tonks asked.

"You get all sorts of people," James replied. "Some of them were very depressed and needed help, and others were just fanatical. Nostradamus made a prophecy about how everyone would die in the year 2000, and some people got together and decided they would make it happen."

"It was a huge conspiracy. People were disappearing off the streets left and right, and no one knew who to trust. Members of the Order would actively pressure try and pressure people into suicide, and then upon their death, resume the dead person's identity with polyjuice. It was very hard to leave."

"They stopped, all of a sudden," Sirius ended. "Sometime after you were born."

"Ron's alive," Harry said. "How is this related to Diagon Alley?"

The adults looked at each other. Finally his dad replied.

"The name came up again during a few incidents in Diagon," he said, with some hesitance. "I want you all to be aware – don't leave with anyone who claims to be from this radical existentialist fringe group, and if they try and make you leave – call out for an Auror straight away."

"Stranger-danger!" Sirius grinned. "Don't do what Draco did and ditch your friends at the floo. Everyone okay?"

"I didn't think it would be a problem!" Draco whined.

In the next few moments, Draco had been guilt-tripped enough (or peer-pressured enough) into giving Harry an apology. Harry left feeling satisfied.

Riddle left to talk to his dad, and Harry ended up playing Wizarding Snap with his sister. She told him about her spelling lists and he thought about what his dad and Sirius had said, imagined coming home and finding his sister, dead in her room.

_Don't talk to anyone from the Order of the Phoenix. Okay dad, got it._

_You don't have to worry about me. _

:::


	5. Chapter 5

**_The Lounge, Grimmauld Place._**

**8:10 p.m.**

"Tom came and spoke to me about a couple of things," James told Harry later that night. He motioned at Harry, patted the spot next to him on the couch. "I'm glad he did."

That was good – Harry thought. They were in a small alcove in the lounge room. The paintings in here were mostly still-life pictures of apples and pears, and these only jumped every now and then. The carpet was a rich embroidered mess, imported all the way from Constantinople in the late 1300s or so, and his feet sunk into the threads.

"I think he's right," Harry added straight away. "Parseltongue can't be a purely Slytherin thing if we both have it."

James shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

What?

"You – can't hate parseltongue, just because it's associated with snakes," Harry said, unsure of himself all over again. His t-shirt sleeves were starting to wear a bit, and Harry pulled at the bottom edge. He was going to need new clothes soon.

James ran his hand through his hair, took off his glasses and rubbed at his forehead. Harry watched him do it and it occurred to him that he used the exact same motion with Hermione, when he was anxious. Everyone told him how much he looked like his dad; Harry looked at him and thought 'When I get older, my hair's going to go grey at the temples first, but I won't be balding.'

"That's not what I meant. I meant it doesn't matter because you're my son and any kind of quirk you had would be a gift."

He patted Harry's back. "I didn't know you felt that way. Sure, I was a little bit surprised the first time, but that was you were hissing and grabbing at a snake like it was your friend. It was only an arms-length away from you. Anything could have happened."

Oh.

"Thought I'd make it clear," James said again, lips curling at the corners. "While we're at it, I thought I'd say – you can tell me these things, you know. Moping around the house doesn't solve problems, talking does."

"Great, good talk dad," Harry replied, returning the smile. "So I can go and visit Tom's snake now?"

And just like that, James' smile dripped right off his face. "I know I just said 'parseltongue is okay, flowers and sunshine, yay', but I am still really, really not happy that he brought the snake into the house."

His expression shuttered and then brightened again.

"My good son, how far have you gotten with your summer homework?"

"I was – attacked and moping around the house?" Harry said. His dad didn't look convinced. "I've started it," Harry answered as quick as a fox.

"I notice Lucius's brat says he's almost done."

"Because Professor Snape is right there," Harry said. "Everyone's working through the summer except for Snape who's bumming around the house, waiting for term to start again."

His dad couldn't hide the smirk before Harry saw it. "That's not quite true, I'm sure your professor is doing other important things that we have yet to see."

"Don't tell me I should've asked him for help," Harry replied. "You hypocrite."

James put his hands up into the air. "Fine, fine! Do you see me saying anything? This is me, not saying anything." He put his hands back down.

"You can go and visit the snake, watch it watch grass or whatever it likes to do while it's inactive," James made a face. "On one condition."

"What is it?"

"Tom's finished his last project early, and now he's got a bit of a break before the Ministry processes his next research application. You should go and ask for a bit of summer tutoring."

"No," Harry said, looking absolutely horrified. "No one asks for summer tutoring. He's an _Unspeakable_, they do things like – witch hunts across all of Europe, dangerous experiments with life and death and realms not our own–"

Harry stood up, as if by doing so he could convey the vast difference between battles with hordes of inferi and talking about one ought to structure an essay in the most Percy-like way.

" –I can't just go and _ask _him to sit down with me for _summer tutoring!_"

"Your History of Magic needs a little improvement," his dad remarked gravely. "It's him or Snape."

Harry was speechless.

His dad brightened again. "Great, good talk son," he said, and pushed him in the direction of Bellatrix's room.

:::

**_Bellatrix's Boudoir, Grimmauld Place._**

**8:21 p.m.**

Bellatrix's room was opulent. A chandelier dangled from the very high ceiling, which was dark green and framed with silver gilding. Almost all the furniture was dark green – the dresser table, the small side-table and chairs for people to sit at, and there was even a dark green chaise lounge.

This was where Riddle was sitting at. He was reading a book while Nagini curled up next to and behind him. The glittering python matched the décor perfectly.

Harry knocked at the door, made of heavy mahogany. It was already open, but it seemed rude to just walk into a bedroom without permission.

"Hi Mr Riddle," he said. "I'm dropping by to see Nagini. You said I could?"

"I did say that," Riddle replied and closed his book. "You should call me Tom. It would be easier."

_'Nagini,_' he said then, scratching the python under its chin. _'Someone is here to see you.'_

She opened one bleary eye and closed it again. _'Tell the pitiful human to leave.'_

Harry stared. '_You have some attitude,'_ he told her in parseltongue. She snapped back at him, teeth glinting in the dim light –

_There was a door and behind it was something that he wanted very much. The snake killed the first person she came across, but they saved the second one._

"She doesn't bite," Tom said, breaking the haze Harry was in.

Harry's scar was aching again. His voice was flat when he said, "I don't believe that for a minute."

"Pythons kill their prey through constriction," Tom replied. He looked slightly amused. "Would you like to feed her?"

The man walked to the table to get her food. Harry watched him remove several packages from his bag before taking out a large container. Tom was very tall. He had long legs.

He pushed the container towards Harry. "Go on. Open it."

There was something inside him telling him that he shouldn't take anything from this man. That voice, of course, was unreasonable. After a moment, Harry pulled the container closer. Before he opened it, his eyes flicked back at Tom's. He thought the man was grinning, but when he looked again, Tom only looked encouraging. Slightly bored.

Harry opened the box. Inside were three scraggly lumps of fur. He picked one up, intending on putting it down in front of Nagini. It made a soft mewing sound.

His fingers slipped and it dropped back into the box again. "These aren't mice," Harry said, looking up at Tom.

"No," Tom replied. "They're cats. They can look like mice when they're very young."

"They're still alive," Harry continued.

Tom raised an eyebrow. "You can kill them first if you like? It's easy."

Harry closed his eyes. He bit down on his lips, unsure of what to say. _This is a cultural difference. It's like Draco who thinks house elves are slaves and Hermione who wants to free them. _He could see it from Tom's point of view – there wasn't much of a difference between cats and mice, and snakes ATE their prey alive in the wild.

Harry couldn't. Their eyes still hadn't opened yet.

"Just kidding!" Tom said, all of a sudden. "They're for you."

What?

"I found them on the street. It looked like someone had abandoned them, and I couldn't just leave them out there – by nightfall they would've died from the cold."

"And I looked at them and thought, 'look at this black one!' It looks a lot like you, doesn't it? And there's a blonde for Draco and a tabby for your sister. It seemed like a perfect gift for all of you."

"Oh," Harry said, stunned for the second time in a row. "That's – really nice of you."

Nagini was still lying across the chaise. If snakes could have facial expressions, Harry would say she was smirking. Harry glanced over at her.

"What about Nagini though? Won't she be hungry?"

"I wasn't going to feed her the kittens," Tom said. The tip of his tongue flicked across his teeth. "I asked Bellatrix and she says that the house elves regularly find mice and doxies in the basement. Kreacher's frozen a few. Do you have a place we can put the cats?"

There was a little corner near the fireplace…

:::

**_The Floo Room, Grimmauld Place._**

**8:43 p.m.**

Azalea and Nymphadora loved the kittens. They coo-ed over them like they were small, precious things, and Azalea spent the rest of her night stroking the fur on the tabby of her likeness.

Draco looked amused as well, but he took his gift without any drama. He already had several Abraxan ponies, a Pegasus and an army of peacocks in his garden. Another pet to him, was really another creature for the house-elves to take care of.

When Harry's mom saw the animals though, she looked like she wanted to object again, and again, Sirius stopped her. "I really wish you had asked me about this first," Lily told Tom, but since her youngest was already in love with the kittens, there wasn't much to be done for it.

They were back in Bellatrix's room after leaving the cats with the girls, and Harry was watching Tom throw frozen mice to his snake – she watched the animals with dark eyes and she caught them out of the air every single time.

Every now and then, he would pass one to Harry, and Harry would do the same. It was kind of cool watching Nagini spring from stillness into action.

"She is a beautiful snake," Harry admitted after a while. Tom might've smiled for a brief moment, and then it was gone the next.

"Are you thinking of getting married to Bellatrix?" Harry asked, when the silence was getting too long.

"We'll see if we can manage living together first," he said, sounding non-committal.

"You're a step up from the last person."

"Really now?" Tom said, looking sideways. And there was something about that smile that made the Gryffindor duck his head.

Harry noticed his heart was beating faster and got angry at himself. What was it about Tom that was making him feel like this? He was always feeling off-balanced, there was this constant pressure in his chest, in his head, like it was hard to breathe.

Godric, he really hoped Tom hadn't noticed. _Get a grip,_ he told himself.

"My dad also wants me to ask you… if you aren't busy… if you could help me out with some of my work?" Harry hesitated.

There was a reason why he hadn't wanted to ask, and it was because he got the impression he and Tom were on two different levels, in two different worlds. Tom had no business talking to him.

"I meant, you did really well on your NEWTs, and I'll be learning all of that over the next two years."

"I have the time," Tom replied.

Nagini snapped another mouse out of the air. Its little bones crunched under the pressure of her teeth. "Did you want to start now?"

"You mean right now?"

"If you had any burning questions you wanted to ask," Tom said. He threw a doxy this time, to the snake. "As you can see, I'm not doing anything particularly important at the moment."

Harry was going to open his mouth and say, no, he left his History of Magic textbook back in his room, and he didn't really feel like going over Goblin Rebellions when the night was going so well.

"I did have a question," Harry said instead, much to his surprise. He hadn't known he was going to ask until this moment. Tom made a distracted 'go-on' sort of sound.

"Is there any way a person could survive the killing curse?"

There were a lot of reflective surfaces in Bella's bedroom – the mirror, the chandelier, the jewellery studded in the furniture. That was the only explanation Harry had for why he thought – for a moment – that Tom's eyes were red.

:::

:::

:::

**A disreputable inn, Diagon Alley, Alternate London.**

**A few days back.**

**4:10 p.m.**

"That should've done it," Shacklebolt said, watching from a nearby window. Hermione's been wringing her fingers ever since she heard that Ron made contact. If the nightmare was going to end, he would rather not tell her what happened to her friend.

He turned to Snape. "What do we do now?"

Professor Snape looked down at his timepiece. "We wait."

They waited. A minute passed, then two, then ten. Charlie tapped his feet, Neville's tracking the movement of small moths near the ceiling, and Tonks was trying to get Ginny to smile, by changing her nose, then her ears, and then her hair. When none of those tricks work, she resorted to knock-knock jokes.

Hermione ended the silence. "Shouldn't the dream have ended by now?"

"I hoped you wouldn't say that," Neville replied.

"With the dreamer dead," Snape said slowly, "the fabric of this reality should have unravelled, with nothing else to sustain it. Everyone should have passed out of the dream safely."

"Obviously, that hasn't happened." Charlie.

Professor Snape mused. "If we commit suicide, and we do not pass out of the dream; it means only one thing. The dreamer isn't dead."

"Both you and I saw the Avada Kedavra spell aimed at Harry Potter. It impacted, and he responded. He fell over," Shacklebolt was terse. "Are you saying he's impervious to that spell? Should we have used something else?"

Snape shook his head, a small minute movement. "Avada Kedavra would work. Potter isn't anything special."

"Then what does it mean?"

"It means the dreamer isn't dead."

Snape stalked about the room, pacing and running his hands through his hair. He was expecting this to be over by now, Shacklebolt understood. He miscalculated, grievously. _We are down another order member; when we finish this mission, the war will begin again and there will be three people walking around with PTSD_. Snape's continuing existence as a spy depended on having the right information and on being correct all the time. A miscalculation of this proportion in the real world would've killed him.

_I thought this mission was too easy_. Shacklebolt relaxed across the table. His eyes were closed. Soon enough, Snape reached a conclusion.

"Harry Potter isn't the only one dreaming. There's someone else in here with us."

:::


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:**

Hi everyone! It's been a long time… :-P I found a job and lost it, so now that I'm in my study vacation week for uni, I suddenly have time.

Everything since chapter three has changed. I would ask you to **re-read from chapter three onwards if you want everything to make sense** (but it's up to you.) I rewrote everything because I hated all the scenes with the Order in them – they took too long to do. Bleagh.

Otherwise, nothing else has changed. The fic is still TMR/HP. But not for a very long time. Harry needs to reach the age of legality first, and then I need to break him completely and rebuild him from the ground up before he can even get to a point where he's even with Tom.

Cheers and have fun reading!

:::

**_Bellatrix's Boudoir, Grimmauld Place._**

**9:33 p.m.**

"Is this for DADA?" Tom asked, after he sent Kreacher off with the rest of Nagini's dinner. He crossed his legs and leant forward on them with his elbows. His sleeves were rolled up. "Your father gave me the impression he wanted me to help you with History of Magic."

Harry shifted slightly on his feet. "Can I say it's for a research project?"

"You don't get research projects in DADA. It's mostly practicals."

"A personal research project," Harry said, raising his chin, and that got a smile out of Tom. He remembered the personal research projects he conducted at age 16.

"Of course. It's fine to be interested in an answer for its own sake."

Tom sat down on the bed. Bellatrix's queen-sized was furnished with a variety of covers and throw pillows. He gestured Harry closer and it made sense at the time, to go along with it. Now they were both sitting on top of the sheets.

"The easy answer is 'no'," Tom said, waving his wand in the air. A vague figure of a man stood there. "If you get hit by Avada Kedavra," Tom said, and a wave of green light rushed towards his figure, "you're dead."

"It stops all the organs in the body, all at once." The figure he was controlling jerked, and various parts of it were highlighted. "The heart stops beating, the lungs stop, the stomach, the kidneys, spleen and liver. Your body can't handle all these organs shutting down at once. It dies."

"What about the answers that aren't easy?" Tom waved his wand and the figure disappeared.

"Supposedly, the brain dies last," he was saying now. His voice had dropped and Harry leaned in closer to listen.

"In the period of the French Revolution, we saw quite a number of people decapitated. They say that Charlotte Corday's eyes turned to her executioner even after her head was torn from her body. Dogs exhibit measurable brain activity for twenty to forty seconds after they die."

Tom was close enough to Harry now to be whispering into his ear. "When a person dies from the killing curse, watch closely and you'll see their life leaving their eyes."

The room was cold. That was why his heart felt cold, and why it was also beating double. Harry grabbed one of Bellatrix's covers – fur from some kind of animal – and threw it over the both of them. Tom rubbed at the fur with his fingers.

"What does this have to do with my question?" Harry said, with his hands clasped underneath the dead animal's skin. He couldn't bring himself to look at his teacher.

"There are ways of getting around the killing curse, theoretically," Tom hummed.

"Because your brain is alive for those precious few seconds after. Isn't it wonderful," and the older man stretched the words out here like skin being pulled into leather, "how we have the same interests, Harry?"

Harry turned and there was Tom, looking into his eyes, and just for a second, Harry was going to do something really stupid –

The door opened. "I'm back," Bellatrix said, walking into the room with a box under her arms. "I brought the item you wanted."

She stopped dead in her tracks at the two of them sitting on her bed. Harry tried to stand up, and was stopped by Tom's hand on his knee.

"Aren't you two cosy." Bellatrix said then.

"I'm helping Harry with his project for the next two weeks, Bella," Tom said, with a really big smile.

"Right," she continued. Her eyes never left Tom's. "I'm glad you're getting along so well with my family."

"I'm glad you brought me here to meet them," Tom continued. The smile never left his face. He turned back to Harry.

"This is higher-level information and you won't need to know it for your DADA exams. But if you're interested, I could give you some books to read up on."

Harry nodded. At the moment, what he wanted most was for Tom to let him _leave._

"Are you sure you'll have the time," Bellatrix asked then. "I don't mean to suggest anything, but you're – going to be quite busy."

His smile turned into a smirk. "You know what I want, dear Bella," he said.

Something like fear crossed her face.

"I'll see you tomorrow night Harry. At seven sharp," Tom said finally, lifting his hand from Harry's knee, and that was it, Harry was saying 'yeah, see you tomorrow, night Bellatrix,' and running out of there like a dragon was on his heels.

As he turned around the corner, he saw Bellatrix again, watching him go. She didn't seem to be upset. If anything, it sounded like she was whispering 'forgive me.'

:::

**_Elsewhere._**

This time, the stars stretched to infinity on top of him and as Harry craned his neck upwards to see where they ended, a shadow fell over his head.

"Oh, it's you again," Harry said. "You're the person from the marketplace."

The snake-man grinned. "How nice it is, to have company," he said.

They sat on a hill where nothing grew – it was all dirt underneath Harry's hand. Every now and then something with multiple heads would come by and wave hello. Harry always waved back.

There was a purple smog in the distance. If Harry focused on it, he could see Bellatrix – she wasn't as beautiful as he remembered her, but when she laughed her smile stretched across her face. Bellatrix at Grimmauld Place didn't do that.

"Do you think I can talk to her?"

"I am sure someone will pass along a message," the snake-man said.

So then Harry wrote 'hello' on a piece of paper. A creature skittled across the dirt, picked it up and disappeared into the smog. It came back later with another piece of paper.

"What does it say?" the snake-man asked.

Harry frowned. "It's translated. 'Where's Sirius?'" he spoke out loud, and looked up to utter fury distorting his companion's features.

:::

**_The Breakfast Table, Grimmauld Place._**

**The next morning.**

**7:05 a.m.**

Andromeda was in the kitchen again, when he turned up first thing in the morning. She was nursing a cup of coffee and frowning at The Daily Prophet. She passed him some fruit to go with whatever Kreacher was cooking for breakfast.

"Do you know what happened to Dumbledore?" Harry asked her before he left.

"Professor Dumbledore?" she said, in a way that sounded absolutely distracted, "Retired. Didn't he leave the school in your second year? I heard he went on a personal quest."

"McGonagall makes for a much better headmaster anyway," Ted said when he came in. He gave Andromeda a kiss on the cheek and stole her newspaper.

Harry took the food to the library, where there was a window with a nice view. Finished it. It occurred to him halfway that if Professor McGonagall was acting as the headmaster, someone else was teaching transfiguration and as hard as he tried to, Harry couldn't remember who had been teaching that class for the last four years.

There was definitely something up with him. Between the nightmares and the memory loss – Harry needed to clear his head. Maybe talk to Hermione.

He got the broom out. Harry didn't really ever have to practice over the summer to keep up his Quidditch skills, but sometimes it was nice just to fly.

From his vantage point he could see the front door opening and closing.

Dad, Uncle Sirius and Dora Tonks came out first – they were Aurors so they needed to get to work early. Next was Uncle Remus, going off for his shift at St Mungos, Tonk's parents, and Mom, who worked as a charm specialist in a small company somewhere. Tom and Bellatrix left sometime after eleven. That left Professor Snape and Draco's mom in the house.

Snape would be organising syllabuses for next year or plotting. Draco's mom's job seemed to be managing the estate or bookkeeping – he never asked either of them what they did in the house during the day.

Harry was flying past the Whomping Willow replica in the yard, when a bushy-haired person came tumbling down from the tree. Her cloak was in a state of disrepair, but that was what happened when you hid in trees.

"Hermione?" he said. "What are you doing, hiding up there?"

She groaned and pulled a twig from her hair. "Do you know how hard it is to get into Grimmauld Place? Who's brilliant idea was it to layer the Apparition wards with necromagic?"

Harry was bewildered. Hermione could use the floo at any time. "Sirius, I guess, he owns the house. Do you want to come in? Kreacher's got breakfast on the table."

"No!" Hermione looked horrified. "No, it's fine. I'll just stay out here. I wanted to talk to you."

"That's a really strange coincidence," Harry peered at his friend. "I was thinking about talking to you as well."

His face turned grim. "I need your help."

Hermione nodded enthusiastically. "If I can help you with anything, I will."

The way she said it made Harry feel warm. She was one of his oldest friends and one of the best. 'Mione believed in fighting for good things and justice, and like Sirius, he could count on her to always be on his side, even if Ron sometimes strayed.

"Do you remember how Ron said hearing voices, even in the Wizarding World, wasn't a good thing? What about seeing double?"

"Any other symptoms," she asked, almost hopefully.

"I keep forgetting small details. And sometimes things aren't the way I remember them."

"Maybe what you're remembering is the truth," she said. Harry gave her a funny look. "I'll look into it Harry. We'll find a way to help."

"What about you, what did you want to talk about?" he asked her now.

"I've got a suspicion about something and I want you to help me with it," she said. Her hair curled in the wind. "The first thing – I'm not supposed to be here, Harry, so you can't tell anyone about it. I'll get into so much trouble. Can you promise me you won't tell anyone I was here?"

"Sure," Harry said, looking surprised. "Why would you be in trouble?"

"We're not supposed to use magic over the holidays, remember? I just apparated."

Harry huffed. "Easy. I've forgotten you were here already," Harry said.

She put her hands over his arms. "I don't want you to ever mention it to anyone. Not even if I bring it up."

"Alright, I get it," Harry replied, looking anxious. "If it means so much to you. Why does it matter?"

"Because of the second bit. It's an investigation I'm doing. I need to ask you a favour," she swallowed. "I want you to tell me what the name Voldemort means to you."

What did the name Voldemort mean to him? It was French. It meant 'Flight From Death'. Very grandiose, somewhat pretentious. It sounded like a name for something or someone evil, and invoked images of a snake inside a skull and people screaming under a wand.

Harry frowned. "Aside from a sense of vague menace? Nothing. But…" the person who had been pretending to be Ron had mentioned Voldemort as well.

"The person who tried to kill me before said something about Voldemort. A dark Lord. Do you think he's connected to the Order of the Phoenix?"

Hermione bit her lips. She had a very terrible habit of doing that. "What about the Order of the Phoenix?"

"Dad told me about it. It's a – radical existentialist society? Don't go anywhere near them," he said.

"Yes," Hermione said. "It's to do with them. I can't tell you what I'm doing but… can you ask everyone you know if the name Voldemort means anything to them?"

"What am I looking for?"

"Anyone who reacts strangely to the name. Let's meet again here, in a week. We'll tell each other what we've learnt."

Harry grinned. "Normally we save our adventures for the end of the school year," he told her and the return smile was as sweet as honey in warm sunshine.

"I want you to know," Hermione said, eyes dark and sad, even as she gave him a quick hug before she apparating away, "that we're doing everything we can to help you."

:::

**A/N:**

R&R if you liked :-)

If you have any ideas you want me to include, drop a line. If you liked the old version better, drop a line. If you want to beta-read, also drop a line, I kind of need a beta desperately. :-P


End file.
